Catching Up
by Rogue 559
Summary: Sequel to Golddigger. The Dominion have been screwing with Shalimar and Jesse. Brennan and Lexa have to find out how.
1. Chapter 1

I'm back. And this is my new story. Its a sequel to Golddigger so you might want to read that one first because the plots are linked and you might want to catch up. And while you're at it you could review Golddigger and make me uber happy.   
  
Anyway, moving on. I hope you all enjoy this fanfiction. I'm having a lot of fun writing it so obviously it would be very much appreciated if you would take a few minutes to review and say something nice or not so nice depending on how you feel.   
  
Disclaimer: none of the Mutant X characters belong to me. The original characters (and any Mutant X fan should know them when they come along) do but I am happy to hire them out for a small fee.   
  
And with no further ado, enjoy.   
  
***  
  
'Well, well. We thought you guys had fallen off the edge of the world.'  
  
Shalimar smiled as she walked down the metal stairs towards the main room of the safehouse. It was their third one of the day and they had received the same reactions from each. Everyone had assumed that there were bigger problems that the team had to deal with but that didn't mean they were all above a little good natured teasing.   
  
'Hello to you too,' Shalimar replied with a smirk.   
  
'How you guys doing?' Brennan said as he closed the door behind him and followed Shalimar down the stairs.   
  
'We're doing okay. You wanna check out the records?' replied a tall blonde haired man. He strolled towards the table in the corner of the room. It held a computer and he picked up a disk which he then handed to Shalimar.   
  
'Thanks Glenn,' she said.   
  
'So what happened to you guys?' said a redhead from the sofa.   
  
'We got a little sidetracked,' Brennan said, hesitantly. He didn't want them to know the whole story about how they had quite simply neglected their jobs but he figured they had to know about the Dominion sometime. They had been handing out warnings in all the other safehouses that if anyone showed up claiming to be from a group affiliated with Mutant X that they were to withhold judgment till they talked to the team. They couldn't risk anymore innocent new mutants being hurt at the hands of the Dominion.   
  
After they had given the warning they said their goodbyes and walked, with the disk out of the building.   
  
'So, that went okay?' Shalimar said tentatively as they walked down the street towards the car they had decided to bring instead of the Helix.   
  
'Yeah,' Brennan answered. 'They don't seem to hate us too much.'  
  
Shalimar laughed as she pulled the keys out of her back pocket.   
  
'Hand them over,' Brennan said as they reached the car.   
  
'Excuse me?'  
  
'You drove from Sanctuary to all the over safehouses and we agreed that to massage my extremely sore male ego at being driven around by a woman we would let me drive back to Sanctuary,' Brennan replied as he leant against the car door.   
  
'Who said we were going back to Sanctuary?' Shalimar said with a smirk as she shoved Brennan out of the way of the driver side door with her hip. She stuck the key in the lock and pulled the door open before swiftly sliding onto the seat.   
  
'Shal, its getting dark. Where else are we going to go other than back to Sanctuary?'  
  
She raised her eyebrows as she yanked the door closed behind her and started the engine. Brennan jogged round to the passenger side, the fear that he would be left behind not completely unfounded.   
  
***  
  
The tapping stopped momentarily as Jesse took a gulp of his coffee before spitting it back into the mug as he realised that it was stone cold. Lexa looked over at him, her eyebrows raised. She saw his brow furrowed as he tried to work out how long he had been working. After the events of the day before the team had all been eager to get to work and Jesse and Lexa had done a little that night and had started early that morning after getting some rest. They had all slept easier that night than they had done in a long time. Their respective burdens had been lifted and Lexa, more so than any of the others felt pure relief in her heart. She hadn't expected to. Sheer terror was one of the emotions she predicted she would experience the minute she turned out the light, but she had lain back on her bed and had felt free at last. It had been a long time coming but it was worth every second.   
  
'You want another cup?' she asked Jesse quietly. They hadn't been pushing themselves too hard so far. They were already ahead in terms of having the inside scoop on the Dominion. The figured they could both take their time in putting all the data together. The Dominion clearly weren't going anywhere.   
  
'You know what?' Jesse replied, turning in his chair.   
  
'What?' Lexa answered from her chair.   
  
'I think I would much rather go to bed,' Jesse said with a smirk.   
  
'Really?' Lexa replied, her smile getting wider. 'Well, I personally think we should really get cracking on this assignment here because Brennan and Shalimar are relying on us to do our job...' She squealed as Jesse walked over to her and picked her up, throwing her over his shoulder. He carried her out of the lab in the direction of his bedroom.   
  
'I'm upside down,' Lexa shouted, laughter evident in her voice.   
  
'I got that,' Jesse said, as he kicked open his door and walked in, ducking slightly to avoid bumping Lexa's head against the doorframe.   
  
She let out another squeal as Jesse dropped her onto the bed. Her head hit the pillow and she closed her eyes as she felt the blood rush from her head to the rest of her body. She opened her eyes as she felt Jesse's weight on top of her and smiled as she saw his sparkling blue eyes looking into her own.   
  
'I like this plan,' she whispered before her mouth was caught by Jesse's in a kiss which left her gasping for air.   
  
***  
  
The beat of the music boomed through the club and Brennan had to squint as one of the flashing lights flicked across his face, straight into his eyes. He looked around him at the packed club. Shalimar had insisted that they take some time out to relax and after the events of the previous few days he wasn't complaining. Plus, any excuse to watch Shalimar dance was cool by him. He felt the grip of her hand on his tighten as they moved through the people.   
  
'You wanna dance with me?' she said as she looked over her shoulder at him. She knew the answer would be no. It always was but she thought she would ask anyway, try and entice him with her puppy dog eyes.   
  
'You want a drink?' Brennan said with a smirk.   
  
'That's a no then?'  
  
'Your usual?'  
  
'Yeah,' they both replied simultaneously as they split up, each going their separate ways, Shalimar to dance her tension away, Brennan to watch.   
  
She could sense everything in the club. It was almost like she could feel everyone around her through every single one of her senses. From the information she was getting she could paint pictures in her head, pretty accurate ones at that of everyone and what they ere doing. It was all about how the music and lights bounced off of the people. It had confused the hell out of her the first time it had happened. She hadn't been expecting it and it had scared her. She remembered running away from any sign of civilisation. She had hid out for a while but had eventually realised she couldn't stay hidden for the rest of her life. And gradually she had learnt to adapt her skill to fit in with her surroundings. She had taught herself, with the help of Adam how to tune it all out so she could live like a normal person most of the time. She would use it when she needed to find someone but other than that she could have it as background music to her life. It was like a soundtrack, one which didn't impede the enjoyment of the movie.   
  
She walked through the crowds to get to the middle of the crush of people. She liked the atmosphere within the club even at its busiest. She may have been a country girl at heart, loving the feeling of freedom that nature gave her but she could never stay away from the crowded cities for long.   
  
'Two beers,' Brennan called out over the bar at the pretty brunette serving him. He turned to look at Shalimar. She was already lost to the world, in her own little place in time and space, letting the music wash over her already glowing body.   
  
'Thanks,' Brennan said as he turned back round and handed the money over in exchange for the much needed drinks. He had been working hard all day, going from safehouse to safehouse, and they had both had to do a lot of talking.   
  
He closed his eyes and was once again assaulted by one of the many images of Laura that seemed to be sticking with him. The scene that he and Shalimar had seen the day before was probably going to stay with them forever. Everytime he closed his eyes for an indefinite period of time he was hit with a flash of her. Sometimes they were pictures of her smiling or laughing or looking bemused at the tension between him and Shalimar. But more often than not they were snapshots of her mangled body. They were disturbing and Brennan knew that if he needed anyone at that point in time it was probably Emma. She would have been able to give him the serenity he needed. He hadn't slept well the night before and he didn't think he was going to sleep well that night either. It would take time, he knew that much, but he didn't know how many more images he could take.   
  
He swigged at his bottle and felt the tap on his shoulder. He turned and saw the pretty brunette who had served him. She had come out from behind the bar and was smiling at him. He smirked as he looked at her. She leant into him.  
  
'You wanna dance?' she said over the music.   
  
'No, but my girlfriends on the dance floor so if you wanted to you could go dance with her,' he replied, hoping that she would get the message. The weird thing about it all was, he thought as he watched her walk away that he hadn't even been tempted. He had always known that his feelings for Shalimar were completely different to those he had ever had for any other woman. She was different. Their whole relationship was so much more intense but also so much more dangerous. The consequences were more far reaching, they were scarier and it was the reason why Shalimar and Brennan had steered clear of each other for so long.   
  
'That for me?'  
  
He turned and saw the blonde feral. She looked hot and he handed the drink over to her. He knew she was going to go back out onto the dance floor and that he probably wouldn't see her for the rest of the evening except for some swift glances which he would receive when the crowds parted enough.   
  
'And you had better not forget our deal,' she said.   
  
'What deal?'  
  
'The one where you get to drive us back to Sanctuary,' she said with a smirk which told him there were to be no arguments as she turned and walked off into the crowd.   
  
***  
  
Brennan strolled over to the passenger side and opened it for Shalimar. She swung her legs out and placed them on the floor. She was pretty sure she wasn't drunk. She would surely know if she was drunk but she felt fine. She looked at Brennan and was suddenly overcome with the desperate desire to giggle. She doubled over with laughter as Brennan watched on with a bemused smile on his face.   
  
'Alright Shal. Time to get you to bed,' Brennan said, as he led her out of the garage and into the main halls of Sanctuary.   
  
'Only if I can go to bed with you,' she said, in her sexiest voice. Brennan wasn't entirely turned on but that was only because of the slurring.   
  
'No way. I am not waking up with you tomorrow morning,' he replied as he continued to lead her towards her bedroom.   
  
She started giggling inanely again and didn't stop till they reached her door. Brennan slid it open and walked inside, lightly pushing Shalimar in the small of her back in front of him. She walked straight over to the bed at which point she collapsed onto it and lay there, her legs sticking off the end and her eyes looking straight up at the ceiling in an absorbed manner.   
  
Brennan looked at her as he slid the door closed behind him, for fear that Jesse or Lexa would walk past and set Shalimar off again with the laughter which could indicate that she was crazy. He walked over to her and knelt down, reaching for her right leg so he could undo her boots.   
  
Suddenly his chin was caught by a steady kick from Shalimar. He landed on his back on the floor and felt the pain shooting through his jaw. He lifted a hand to his face to make sure nothing was broken and looked up as Shalimar's head appeared over the edge of the bed. She looked wide eyed and apologetic.   
  
'Are you okay?' she said, her voice full of wonder, possibly at how much power her foot had.   
  
'Yeah,' Brennan said with a groan.   
  
'What happened?' Shalimar asked as she clambered off the bed onto the floor and crawled over to Brennan. He rolled his eyes at her and sat up.   
  
'You kicked me, Shal.'  
  
A moment passed as Brennan watched Shalimar's face. It didn't move for a second and then she creased up into a ball and he could just about make out the sound of cackling laughter.   
  
He stood up, feeling the aching in his back and grabbed Shalimar underneath her arms, pulling her gently to her feet. He conveyed her to the bed and she immediately lowered herself onto it, the exhaustion kicking in even through the blur of alcohol. Brennan managed to remove her boots without too much difficulty second time round and he pulled the covers up so Shalimar could climb in. He was not even going to attempt to take off the rest of her outfit.   
  
He placed her boots in the corner of the room so she wouldn't trip over them and then turned back to her to say goodnight. But he was too late. Shalimar's eyes were closed and her breathing was deep and steady. She was completely oblivious to the world around her. She looked so peaceful, so still and Brennan could have watched her sleep forever.   
  
He smiled and turned, sliding the door open and then closed behind him, as silently as he could, even though he knew not even her nocturnal instincts could wake her now. 


	2. Chapter 2

Sorry its taken me so long but I'm here now as is chapter 2. Its a little less funny than the last one (I'm glad to hear you all seemed to enjoy the drunken Shalimar scene so much) but hopefully I'll still get some feedback from everyone. As per usual you're gonna get my plea for reviews so please, make me happy.   
  
***  
  
'Brennan?' The voice broke through his subconscious and gradually pulled him out of the sleep he had drifted in and out of throughout the night. He opened his eyes and looked around but to no avail. There was no one in his room and he figured he must have dreamed it.   
  
'Brennan?' He started at the sound and looked at the com ring on his finger. He rolled his eyes at his own retardness as he raised his hand to his mouth.   
  
'Yeah?' he said groggily, his voice still getting used to its own sound.   
  
'Sorry to wake you but its noon and if you're planning on getting round the rest of the safehouses today you're gonna have to leave pretty soon,' Jesse said.   
  
'Give me half an hour to get ready and then I'll leave. Is Shalimar up?'  
  
'Not yet, but you know how ferals like their beauty sleep. Lexa's gonna go out with you today,' Jesse replied.   
  
Brennan frowned at the statement. He wasn't so sure that it was a good idea for Lexa to be tagging along. It wasn't that he thought she would piss people off or anything like that. He was sure that she would do fine with the other new mutants. And it wasn't that he didn't trust her. Well, not entirely. But he didn't know if the new mutants in the safehouses, after being left alone to fend for themselves for so long would welcome a new face, one which was so unfamiliar.   
  
Jesse could tell from the silence that Brennan was mulling the idea over. 'She's gotta see the safehouses sooner or later,' he said.  
  
'I know,' Brennan answered, knowing how Jesse felt about Lexa and knowing that she wasn't the evil bitch she had been made out to be. Plus Jesse had a point. If the team was going to face the Dominion they had to teach Lexa the ropes. 'Half an hour,' he said before cutting the link.   
  
***  
  
Jesse slid open the door, the wood silently moving along the runners and saw Shalimar, lying on the bed in the fetal position. The covers were strewn around, one end touching the floor, the other lying underneath her still body. Her blonde hair looked bedraggled and it concealed half her face from view. He slid the door open a little wider and walked in, the steaming mug of coffee in one hand. He placed it on the bedside table and sat down on the edge of the bed. She hadn't stirred till that point but feeling the tugging on the bedcovers beneath her she rolled over in a stretch which showed just which kind of feral she was. Her eyes opened and she stared at him for a while as they focused. Once the blurriness had gone away a sleepy smile appeared on her face.   
  
'Hey,' he said quietly, knowing she would probably kill him if he spoke any louder.   
  
'You brought coffee?' she asked as she sat up.   
  
He chuckled before handing her the cup. In all his time at Mutant X he had only ever seen Shalimar with a hangover a few times. She could handle her drink well but he figured it was something to do with her feline DNA. As wasted as she got she would hardly ever wake up with a headache or the urgent desire to vomit. She had always healed quicker than most people and Jesse guessed that her body dealt with the after effects of the alcohol while she slept instead of when she woke up. It was one of the few things that annoyed him about her especially when she waltzed into his room the morning after a drinking session and acted way too chirpily for someone who had drank everyone under the table the night before.   
  
After she had gulped back a few mouthfuls of the warm liquid she leant back against the wall behind her bed.   
  
'I hope you don't mind but you're on computer duty with me today,' Jesse said. He looked at Shalimar as she smiled in acceptance. He turned and walked across the room, picking up items of clothing which Shalimar had thrown there in the course of the week. He smirked at her inability to be tidy. They had always looked after each other, the closeness coming from the lack of any family figures in their lives except Adam. Since his death they had both clung even more to each other.   
  
He heard Shalimar's feet touch the floor next to her bed and turned just in time to see her walking into the bathroom. He heard the sound of running water and saw steam coming from the open door. After he had finished picking up all the clothes which were littering the room and had restored them to Shalimar's closet he picked up the empty coffee mug and walked out, sliding the door to after himself.   
  
He walked through the halls of Sanctuary to reach the lab where the computers were already up and running, on an automatic search for the Dominion. The team had made the decision not to tell any of the other new mutants. They all had enough on their plate and what they didn't already know couldn't hurt them. Small warnings were all the team was handing out. They had all gotten together the other night, before Shalimar and Brennan had decided to go and get wasted, and had decided to keep the Dominion sweet. They couldn't afford to be fighting them as well as helping all the random mutants who were in trouble. And plus they needed to find the people most in danger and the Dominion were the best way to do that. Any information which they garnered from them would go into the file and be used to help others. The teams real intentions were to be kept secret for as long as possible until they had gained enough strength to take the Dominion on. The risks were massive but they were all used to living dangerously. This was nothing new, just another Genomex.   
  
Jesse sat down in the chair that had been his home for the past couple of hours. The documentation of everything wasn't difficult but it involved him reading everything and then putting it all in order which was taking a lot of time. Shalimar was a skim reader and her eyes were a hell of a lot less tired than his were so maybe they would get along a little bit quicker once she turned up.   
  
***  
  
Shalimar felt the hot water beat down on her bare shoulders. She tipped her head back so that all of her hair was shoved under the forceful spray coming from the shower head. She closed her eyes and felt it all wash over her, rinsing the smells of the last night from her skin.   
  
She rubbed at her eyes. She hadn't slept too well the night before. She had drifted off easily enough but once again the images had floated back to her while she slept. The blood splattered across the dirty floor in patterns which wouldn't have seemed out of place in a piece of abstract art; the neck of Lucy, bent at an odd angle with bone shoving itself through the skin; the look of pure horror on her face, frozen there for eternity. The people sent by the Dominion must have beaten her to within an inch of her life before killing her. Shalimar wished she could stop picturing all the ways Lucy was tortured before she died but her mind couldn't move away from the morbid thoughts. It was at times like these that she especially wished Emma was alive. She would have known what to do or say to make Shalimar feel better. She would have told her that everything was going to suck for a while and that even then everything might not be okay, but Shalimar had always appreciated that kind of honesty. Everyone in her immediate vicinity was kidding themselves that this was a new beginning. And she had tried to make herself believe that too. But things were always harder than they seemed and Shalimar, although sure that Mutant X was ready for whatever fight was thrown their way wasn't sure that the team were prepared for the extent of that fight.   
  
She picked up the bottle of shampoo and tipped it upside down, watching the liquid drip from the lid of the plastic container. It oozed through her fingers, some of it falling to the watery floor below, some of it caught in the palm of her hand. She raised her hand to her head and felt the coolness hit, in amongst the heat of the water.   
  
Water was a cleansing experience for her in more ways than one. Everything that she went through in a day could be alleviated by a shower, or atleast she could get a chance to think about it all for a little bit. She wished it was really that easy.   
  
***  
  
'And this is Gerry,' Brennan said, gesturing towards a tall blonde man. Lexa looked across the length of the room and smiled at the man Brennan had pointed out to her. She was feeling a little overwhelmed. So far that day they had visited five safehouses and she had been introduced to atleast 27 new mutants whose names she had given up trying to remember at safehouse number two. She turned and walked into the kitchen as Brennan started a conversation with the other six people in the room. She could hear the faint murmur of their voices as she moved away from them. She poured herself a glass of water and thought back to the night before. She had never felt the way she did about Jesse before. She hadn't been prepared for it in the beginning. The whole relationship thing had always seemed slightly beyond her because she worked so hard and had so many secrets that she couldn't tell anyone. There was so much mystery surrounding her life and she couldn't ever risk anyone finding out about any of it. But with Jesse it was very different. He knew who she was, what she was and he knew who she had previously worked for. And despite all of that and despite all of the baggage that she brought with her he still wanted to know her, he still wanted to be close to her. She smiled at the thought of how amazing he was. He was allowing her to get lost in this magical moment without having to worry about what came next because she knew that whatever it was he would have her back and he would support her and he would fight for her. She had never trusted anyone that much.   
  
She turned as she heard someone walk in behind her. She looked up at Brennan's face. There was still a moderate amount of tension between the two of them but things had been better since the whole team had decided on their current mission.   
  
'How you doing?' he asked as he pulled open the fridge and lifted a bottle of water out of it. He placed it on the table in front of Lexa and reached for another one before closing the fridge door behind him.   
  
'I'm okay. A little in awe of the system you seem to have going here,' she replied.   
  
'Yeah,' Brennan said as he looked around him. He had been a little in awe of the underground world of new mutants. If he had have known it was there when he was a teenager his life probably would have been very different. Crime would have been a far off world to him. But without his criminal past he might not have happened to run into the Mutant X team as it stood then with Adam and Shalimar and Jesse when he did and then he wouldn't have joined. He blinked himself back to the real world as peals of laughter strayed in from the other room.   
  
'So where do we go now?' she asked, unscrewing the cap from her bottle.   
  
'No other safehouses and I don't know about you but I didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night so I wouldn't mind heading home.'  
  
'I know what you mean,' Lexa said with a knowing smile mostly directed at herself. Last night sleep had not been her first priority.   
  
'Really?' Brennan replied with a smirk and raised eyebrows.   
  
She rolled her eyes before walking past him. She waved a goodbye to the other people in the room and jogged up the stairs leading out of the safehouse. She heard Brennan follow her and knew she was not going to get away with telling him nothing.   
  
***  
  
'So, are you going to tell me exactly what you meant by that 'I know what you mean' comment earlier,' Brennan asked as the Helix took off of the ground. He looked across at the brunette in the passenger seat. She looked quietly happy, an emotion which was usually replaced on her face by suspicion or fear or anger.   
  
'Why should I tell you what you already know?'  
  
'Because it'll make you squirm for a little bit longer,' he offered.   
  
She turned to him and smiled when she saw the mocking glance he threw her.   
  
Her eyes suddenly widened as a huge booming noise ripped through the Helix. She felt the jolt run through every part of her body and her head slammed against the window next to her. She looked across at Brennan who looked equally shocked. They both turned just in time to see the flash of sparks shoot out from the side of the plane. Brennan pushed himself out of his seat and over to Lexa to try and protect her from any shrapnel from the planes interior. They both felt their stomachs fly into their throats as the plane plummeted to the ground below. Brennan felt his windpipe constricting as he watched the ground get closer and more real. He forced himself back into his seat as he tried to override the planes natural desire to follow the laws of gravity. He pushed buttons and pulled levers but nothing seemed to be working. Whatever it was that had caused the fireworks display had probably taken out the central control system.   
  
He couldn't believe this was it. There was no way to fix what was wrong with the plane in the short amount of time he had left. He couldn't believe he was about to die. It was the inevitability of it all that really got him. For so long he had been placed in situations which would have signaled death for him but he had escaped, he had worked his way out of them. But now, at one of the few points when he felt like he didn't have to worry about anything he was actually going to die. His thought raced towards Shalimar and he wondered what her reaction would be. He hated leaving her after everything that had happened. He knew she wouldn't be able to handle losing him and Lexa. She had already watched Adam, Emma and her own father die in front of her and this would finish her off. He closed his eyes and saw her face staring back at him.   
  
Lexa looked around her. Everything was moving too fast and she couldn't process any of it. The ground was hurtling towards them but she wasn't thinking about her imminent death. Jesse was on her mind even then. She had never felt like that before. Whenever she was in a relationship she had always been able to turn it off so she could concentrate on something else, it was one of the benefits of having thick walls all around her. But she had opened up, she had let him in and she was now facing the consequences. When she was about to die, which should have been a completely self obsessed moment she couldn't stop thinking about him. It would have been funny if she wasn't so terrified.   
  
As the ground grew closer and their fate became more unavoidable they both looked at each other, breath held tight within their chests. 


	3. Chapter 3

Sorry its been so long. I've got deadlines at school etc. but I promise that after next week everything should become a lot more regular and I'll be able to write and update more. Thank you for all the reviews and please, as always take the time to review this chapter.   
  
***  
  
Jesse closed his eyes and listened to the buzz of the air conditioning. He had been working all morning and most of the afternoon and he was just about ready to throw the computer monitor against the wall. His eyes were starting to go blurry on him, everything around him becoming distorted for seconds at a time. He slid off of his chair in search of some sort of caffeine. He walked past Shalimar who had picked the job of reading and filing all the paperwork. She was curled up on the sofa working her way through a stack of paper. She was highlighting any relevant information in a bright pink pen - her way of making the day that little bit more interesting - and was then splitting them up into two piles; ones with stuff they needed and ones with stuff they didn't. She looked tired as well but that was probably more from the night before than any effort she was exerting doing the work.   
  
Shalimar looked up as the sound of Jesse's feet dragging along the carpet alerted her to his presence.   
  
'You were busy last night?' she said with a smile.   
  
Jesse stopped dead in his tracks. He had assumed that Brennan and Shalimar knew nothing of himself and Lexa, especially not from last night. They had both come in too late, he had heard the giggling and by that point Lexa was sleeping in his arms and his head was lying on the pillow next to hers. He turned to face her.   
  
'Yeah,' he answered guardedly.   
  
'You need to get away from those computers occasionally,' she said.   
  
Jesse chuckled as he realised that Shalimar didn't know anything. She would probably find out soon but for now he was very happy to leave her hanging.   
  
'Yeah,' he repeated with an open smile. He turned back around to walk away.   
  
'I'm very happy for you and Lexa.' Her voice rang out across Sanctuary and Jesse knew he hadn't mistaken the words. He rolled his eyes. Shalimar usually managed to convince him that she knew less than she really did and everytime he fell for her dumb blonde act.   
  
'Really?' he asked, doubting that Shalimar was being all that genuine considering her feelings towards Lexa.   
  
She placed the pile of papers that had been on her lap on the floor next to the couch and walked over to the blonde man, who still had his back to her. She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her chin on his shoulder.   
  
'Yes,' she said as sincerely as she could, hoping to get the message across. Lexa had grown on her over the past few months and Shalimar would even go so far as to call her a friend. She was definitely not going to begrudge Jesse for having a relationship with the woman. Trust was still an issue between them but a lot had happened, too much for Shalimar to be completely suspicious of Lexa. She would talk to the woman when she and Brennan got back from the safehouses. She couldn't guarantee that there wouldn't be some warnings thrown around as to what would happen to anyone who screwed Jesse over but she would atleast put some effort into playing nice.   
  
'Thank you,' Jesse replied, glad that everything seemed to be working out okay, for him and Lexa and for the team in general. Everything was starting to become more normal, as normal as it ever was when you were a new mutant whose day job was to save the world.   
  
***  
  
Lexa's eyes snapped open. She looked around her but the room was dark and her eyes still weren't capable of focusing. The eeriness of the room crept up on her and she felt a shiver run all the way down her spine. There was nothing in it, atleast as far as she could tell but she wasn't prepared to get up and wander around in order to find out. She had no idea how she had gotten there. But she could remember what had happened right before she blacked out. The Helix had been descending way too fast out of the sky and Brennan and herself had been left to face the ground and the ton of pain it brought with it.   
  
She stood up, testing out each of her limbs as she did so. Nothing hurt except her head but that was pounding enough for her. A thin sliver of light was illuminating a rectangular shape and Lexa made her way towards it assuming that it was a door and the beginning of her escape route. Just as she reached it she heard steady footsteps coming from the other side. She ran quickly and quietly back to the spot on the floor where she had been lying before and lay down, slowing her breathing till even she couldn't hear it anymore. She closed her eyes as the door opened and the room was illuminated with light.   
  
'There she is,' came a male voice. It landed on her ears and she struggled to hold back the gasp that so desperately wanted to come out. She recognised the voice instantly, the voice representing everything that was wrong with her past.   
  
'Lexa Pierce. You've done well.' The second voice, also male sounded older. Lexa didn't know it but it could have been anyone. When she had known the first guy he had had a lot of contacts, ones she wasn't privy to. 'And now, we should talk about your payment?'  
  
'I want to be here when she wakes up,' the first voice replied. Lexa stifled a shudder. She wanted him to leave but there was no chance of that now. Her mind zipped through some of the options she was now presented with. She could try and escape while the door was open but she knew better than that. The first guy would take her out within seconds. Or she could bide her time, wait until she was presented with a less risky opportunity.   
  
'Done,' the second voice said. She heard their receding footsteps and the bang of the door as it closed behind them leaving her in the dark alone.   
  
***  
  
'They've been gone a while,' Shalimar said nonchalantly as she leaned back in her chair. 'You think we should check on them?' She turned to look at Jesse and raised her eyebrows. Her eyes flitted across to one of the windows. The light had gradually been fading and now she could see the first few stars shining in the cloudless sky as dusk transformed into night. Shalimar could feel herself becoming more awake than she had been all day, she felt more alive, more connected to the world outside the rock. The pull was becoming stronger and more natural. Every night she felt more like she should be outside Sanctuary, more like she needed to be. In the past it had been a case of wanting to go outside, she had chosen to do so. But now there was a lot less free will involved.  
  
'They'll be okay,' Jesse replied. He looked at Shalimar's face as concern grew in her eyes. 'But if it will put your mind at rest...'  
  
A coy smile reappeared on her face. 'Thank you,' she said. She turned back to the computer that she was having trouble focusing on. Her mind kept on drifting to either Brennan or the outside world.   
  
'Brennan, Lexa,' Jesse said in the vague direction of his comlink. There was a long pause in which Shalimar turned around in her chair and a frown appeared on Jesse's face.   
  
'Brennan, Lexa?' he repeated, louder than before.   
  
'Yeah?' came Brennan's voice eventually. Shalimar breathed a silent sigh of relief as she heard his voice. She would never admit it to anyone but she always got scared when she didn't know where Brennan was. She would have liked to have put it down to an overprotective feral thing or even an overprotective girlfriend thing but she knew it was more than that. They had a connection. She could sense him when he was around and even worse for her, she could sense when he wasn't even close.   
  
'Where are you guys?' Jesse said.   
  
'We got chatting to some of the guys at one of the safehouses and then we had a little too much to drink,' Brennan replied. Lexa's giggles interrupted him and Jesse had to smother a laugh. He knew when the two of them were close to being wasted. 'So anyway, we thought we'd stay here for the night and then come back in the morning.'   
  
'Alright,' Jesse said before cutting the link. He knew Shalimar wouldn't be happy with the result but when he turned around he discovered he was wrong. She was smiling to herself.   
  
'What?' he asked.   
  
'Brennan not being here gives me a chance to do the nocturnal thing,' she replied. When Brennan was around she had to force herself to stay inside. She wanted to spend time with him but at the same time the pull from the feral inside of her was something she couldn't ignore. She didn't blame Brennan, it was her own fault that she didn't go out prowling through the night time air, he had a magnetic pull which she gave herself up to.   
  
'You wanna get some pizza first?' Jesse asked.   
  
She smiled in reply before jumping off her chair and walking towards the kitchen with Jesse in hot pursuit.   
  
***  
  
'Very well done,' he said as he walked around the psionic. 'Your abilities are powerful indeed.'  
  
'Thank you sir. I just want to do my bit for the Dominion's cause,' she replied.   
  
'But you have real dedication for it. Making Mulwray and Pierce believe that they were crashing in the Helix was a stroke of genius and allowed our telekinetic full control of the plane. And just now, Kilmartin and Fox sucked up every word.' His compliments weren't completely insincere. He was very impressed by the psionics powers. She was incredibly powerful and he knew would be a very valuable commodity to the upcoming assignment that he had been given from the very pissed off powers above. 


	4. Chapter 4

Sorry its taken so long to update. Schoolwork and life have been getting in the way a little more than planned but isn't that always the way. I'm on holiday from school now though so I should in theory be able to get a bit more done so updates should come a little faster. Thank you all for being so patient and for the reviews. I always love to hear what you think so keep them coming.   
  
***  
  
Brennan woke as a scream sent shivers down his spine. He raised his head to try and make out anything in the dark but it obscured his vision too much. He knew the scream had issued from Lexa's mouth and he wanted to help her but he had no idea how. He didn't even know where he was or what he was doing there. His head ached so much he could barely think. It must have been the crash of the Helix that had caused it but he couldn't feel pain anywhere else. He rolled onto his side and peered further into the darkness. He could make out the door frame, shining like a beacon. He pushed himself up till he was resting on his forearms. Nothing else seemed to hurt, which was weird considering how quickly the Helix had been descending. He listened closer as the screaming which had been a constant pain to his ears stopped. The chilling noise was replaced by a soft whimpering sound. Footsteps came down the hall and stopped outside his door. He could make out two sets of feet from the crack underneath it and he backed against the wall, wanting to avoid any kind of confrontation until he knew who or what he was facing. The whimpering had increased in volume as the footsteps had and as the door opened the clarity of the sound became all the clearer. Brennan blinked and squinted into the light, unable to make out anything for a few seconds atleast. He eventually became accustomed to the brightness and looked toward the people standing in the doorway.  
  
His eyes widened as he saw the state of Lexa. Tears were streaming down her cheeks and dripping off of her chin onto the concrete floor causing dark splotches on the pale ground. A deep purple bruise was beginning to form on one side of her face but that was all the physical damage he could make out. The two men who were with her were supporting her under her arms but her knees dragged against the floor even then. They walked in and without even noticing that Brennan was there unceremoniously dumped her onto the floor in the corner. Brennan winced as he heard the thump of her arm connecting with the hard stone. The men turned and walked out of the room slamming the door behind them as they went.   
  
Brennan crawled across the floor in the vague direction of Lexa, feeling with his hands for her body. Eventually he found her and he leaned against the wall next to her. She was breathing deeply, the whimpering halted for the moment. Brennan reached out for her hand and as he found it he clasped it tightly in his own.   
  
***  
  
She sniffed the night air. The day had presented no cloud cover to block out the sun but now the dark was cold and fresh and invigorating. Shalimar could feel it all seeping in through her thick clothes, cooling her warm skin. She pulled her collar up around her neck and walked along the beach. Her boots left footprints behind which were instantly erased by the incoming tide. She looked up, out towards the horizon and watched as the moon shimmered off of the water's surface. She had forgotten quite how wonderful the outside world could be, having not visited it in some time.   
  
She walked slowly, picking her way through the occasional strand of seaweed. She reached a group of rocks which blocked her from the second stretch of golden sand. She pushed her hair out of her way and drew her hands from her deep pockets. She grabbed hold of a rock and pulled herself up onto the grouping. She looked around her. One of the things Mutant X had taught her was that even if you thought you were alone, chances were you were being watched. And even if you weren't you should always check. She remembered becoming so bored of that lesson when Adam had been teaching it, but it had been a valuable one and she appreciated that now. In the world in which Mutant X operated it wasn't called paranoia, it was called safety first. She sat down and drew her legs into her chest, wrapping her arms around them and hugging herself.   
  
It had been a long time since she had been alone, truly by herself. With everything going on over the past couple of weeks she hadn't really had the opportunity to think things through, atleast not properly. Her dad was dead, so was Lucy, Mutant X had finally broken away from the Dominion. A lot of bad things had happened but they had suprisingly led to some good things too. She hadn't really been missing her dad since he had officially gone from her life. She did regret not having been given the chance to hear him say that he was sorry, an emotion that she knew he had been experiencing at the time of his death. And she was regretful that the Dominion had gotten rid of one of the people who could have aided in the battle against them. But, when she really thought about it she had never truly known her father. They had never been close, she had never been daddy's little girl. There had always been tension between them and Shalimar had always valued Adam more than she did Nicholas. Him being gone forever just closed a chapter in her life where she had been plagued by the idea that he might come back. But she would have loved for Adam to have been there to guide her, to tell her what she had to do. Things would have been so much easier.   
  
The loss of Lucy had been a little more difficult to deal with. Shalimar had been plagued by images of that day and she had the distinct feeling that Brennan had too. But she didn't know how to broach the subject with him. How was she supposed to start that conversation? She knew that if they talked about it with each other it might help ease the pain but she didn't want to have that talk yet, she wasn't ready for it.   
  
The sky gradually grew lighter in the distance and Shalimar could feel the morning growing ever closer. She could sense it through her skin. A feeling of tiredness filled her, the exhilaration produced by the night disappearing with the dark. She pushed herself up from the rocks and jumped lightly off of them onto the hard sand below. She walked slowly back along the long expanse of beach towards Sanctuary.   
  
***  
  
She woke with a start. She had been lost in a dream, one where everything was completely skewed and surreal. Although looking back on the past couple of hours she wasn't sure she had even been asleep. At first she couldn't see a thing in the black but gradually her eyes got adjusted to the shadows and she could make out vague shapes. Unfortunately there weren't any vague shapes for her to see. There was nothing in the room except her, Brennan and a whole lot of dirt. Every part of her head was aching and when she moved she could feel sharp jolts of pain running through her nerves.   
  
She sat up a little and turned towards Brennan. His hand and hers were still linked, it had been the one thing that had stopped her from giving up on everything, it was the one thing which had helped her to finally fall asleep. She heard his clothes rustle slightly as he stirred into wakefulness. His breathing shortened as he realised where he was and his hand slipped from her grip. She reached out to him and finally found his arm. She grasped it and tried to reassure him by squeezing slightly.   
  
'Brennan,' she whispered into the darkness, not sure if he was even listening.   
  
After a few moments pause she heard the muttered reply of her name and felt his muscles relax slightly beneath her palm.   
  
They were silent for a little while, both lost in thought about what had happened in the past few hours.   
  
'Are you okay?' Brennan asked. He remembered her being carried in but he also remembered that he hadn't even checked on her. He knew she appreciated the holding hands thing but for him it had been kinda selfish. He had needed to feel someone, had needed to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone else was there.   
  
'I will be,' she replied. She had lost consciousness atleast five times while they had been interrogating her. She hadn't recognized any of her captors. The man she did know had gone to deal with something else and hadn't shown up to see her suffer though she had no doubt that he knew.   
  
'Do you know who's holding us?'  
  
She breathed in. She didn't even want to think about who it was but she knew that Brennan deserved to know. She couldn't always keep her secrets to herself, not while she was a member of a team atleast.   
  
'The Dominion,' she replied. 'More specifically a guy called Charles Handon.'  
  
'A guy from your past?'  
  
'I guess he just wanted to catch up,' she said wryly. There was a lot of history between her and Handon. At that moment too much to talk about.   
  
***  
  
She looked at the sleeping form in front of her as she removed her thick coat. Jesse had been up for a long time, working on the computers, drinking lots of coffee, presumably thinking about Lexa for some of it atleast. Shalimar knew him well enough to know that once he started on a project he wasn't likely to stop for anything, even his eyes drifting closed. She knew how long he could keep going. He wasn't the sort to distinguish between a very important task and a more mediocre one. In his mind every job had a purpose and needed to be done. It was one of the things Shalimar most admired about him. He made it seem almost effortless, his capacity to care about something seemed endless. Granted she had taught him a lot of the more fundamental things about the network and computers in general but he was much better at it all than she was. He was constantly searching for answers and if they didn't appear to be there he would look harder. Shalimar didn't have the patience to search for long unless she knew she was getting somewhere.   
  
But finally sleep had caught up with him and with his head resting on his forearm, his blonde hair covering his eyes he had drifted off. Shalimar was glad. He would need the rest if they were intending to keep the Dominion on their toes.   
  
She walked through the building quietly, hoping that Jesse would remain out of it for just a short while longer. She made her way towards her bedroom and her thoughts drifted towards Brennan. She didn't like when he wasn't there. She missed him even when he was only gone for a few minutes. She had never felt that way about anyone. She chuckled to herself as she realised that the one guy she could truly fall in love with was the one it was most inconvenient to be with. They both knew what kind of strain their relationship could place on the team and vice versa but Shalimar didn't want to stop being with him. It was like he completed her. She sat down in a chair in the corner of her room and smiled. How had she managed to make the transition from being cynical to being a complete believer in the 'power of love' within just a few days? She had no idea and she wasn't going to question it. Everything was going so perfectly that she didn't want to be the one to jinx it. 


	5. Chapter 5

I'm finally back with another update. School work still being annoyingly present, I think its probably gonna be like that for a while so if updates are few and far between I apologise now. And I promise that the end few lines of this chapter are not spelling errors that I managed to overlook in the editing process. All will be explained in the next couple of chapters so I'll try and get those uploaded tomorrow. Please review and let me know if its making any sense at all and thanks to all the people who have reviewed already.   
  
***  
  
The door creaked open swiftly and slammed against the wall. The sound echoed through the room in large resounding booms and woke Brennan and Lexa with a start. Their eyes sprang open and they both visibly jolted. Brennan knew, before the men even entered the room what was going to happen. They had talked to Lexa and now they were going to 'talk' to him. The bad guys were, if nothing else predictable. They never really liked to keep Mutant X on their toes, always preferring the safe options over the more exciting ones, he thought sarcastically. He was trying to keep his mind off the inevitable. Lexa hadn't given him any details of what they did to her and for that he was incredibly grateful. He knew that if had been told everything he would have dreaded going but as it was he resigned himself to being scared but a little indifferent. He had experienced the worst kinds of pain before and he figured that this would be nothing new.   
  
Lexa watched Brennan as two men walked into the room. He looked prepared for whatever was coming. What he didn't realise was that this really was all about her. The Dominion and Handon weren't interested in punishing Mutant X, atleast not at the moment. Mutant X could wait. Lexa was the initial target and the Dominion were going to make her pay for screwing them over. She closed her eyes and readied herself for what was to come. At length she felt the men's hands on her arms as they pulled her roughly off of the floor.   
  
'What the hell's going on?' Brennan said loudly. He watched on as the two silent men started to take Lexa out. She wasn't resisting, allowing herself to be taken out of the room. It took him a few moments to realise what was going on but he eventually managed to force himself into action. He stood up from the floor and walked forward purposefully. One of the men let go of Lexa's arm and turned just in time to take a hard right hook from Brennan. As his fist made contact with the man's jaw Brennan fell to the ground. Pain ripped through his nerves and his brain. It was debilitating and he couldn't even think about what it was, let alone react against it. He gritted his teeth, trying not to let it take over, trying to regain control of his own body. By the time he had opened his eyes and looked around him the room was yet again in darkness. Lexa was gone.   
  
***  
  
Jesse's head shot up from the table where it had been lying. A red mark blazed on his forehead where it had been resting against his arm and one of his legs had gone to sleep and was just getting to the tingly phase. He rubbed it absentmindedly with one hand as he looked at his watch, trying to work out how long he had been asleep for. He stared at the ticking hands incomprehensibly for a few seconds before giving up and sliding himself off of his chair. As the leg with pins and needles hit the floor he let out a small grunt and felt it give way beneath him. His hand banged down on the table top as he tried to steady himself and his vision flashed swiftly. He blinked a couple of times as he righted himself and put the whole incident down to sleepiness. He wasn't tired but he hadn't slept a lot the night he spent with Lexa and his body seemed to be punishing him for staying awake for such long periods of time. He groaned gently as he walked through to the kitchen, his eyes finding it hard to accustom themselves to the brighter lights which illuminated the room. He flicked the switch on the coffee machine and sat down, the gurgling sound of coffee dripping into the pot below filling the room.   
  
He rested his head in his hands. The Dominion information that he had gathered over the past couple of hours was still fresh in his mind but he could sense that it was gradually starting to fade away from his memory. Most of it was boring and dull to read. It was all about various missions they had undertaken over the past few years, or atleast that was the initial impression he had gotten. But gradually as he dug a little deeper he had started to realise that the Dominion went back a lot further than even Lexa supposed. And as he looked underneath the surface of the Dominions operations he saw that boring missions weren't all they had a part in. There were gruesome stories, ones which showed off the true nature of the Dominion. New mutants killed, experimented on so the Dominion could further themselves in the world, so they could become more powerful. It made him sick to his stomach. He had never understood the propensity to make others suffer. Mason Eckhart had had it, Gabriel Ashlocke had had it, the upper echelon in the Dominion had it. Jesse didn't think he'd ever get it.   
  
He considered going to bed but there was something nagging at him. He knew he would probably get very little done whilst putting the maximum amount of effort in, but he wanted to carry on gathering information. He wasn't happy about leaving any of it open ended, he didn't like having the Dominion still running around, doing what they did best. He wanted it finished, and sooner rather than later was definitely preferable to him.   
  
***  
  
'What do you want?'  
  
The man looked up at Lexa with a frown marring his handsome features.   
  
'Why do you ask questions when you already know the answers?' he replied.   
  
'Why do you?' she bit back. He was right, she knew exactly why she was there and what was required from her before they let her go. But she wanted to hear the official line.   
  
'Touché,' he answered as he turned away. He wrote something on a sheet of paper quickly and the room was left in silence once again. Lexa looked around her. In all her time at the Dominion's facilities she had only ever entered this room once. It was one of their torture chambers, neatly dressed up in the facade of an operating theatre. She had brought a message to the 'surgeon', a guy who actually went by that name. She had entered the room and immediately the smell of cleansing products hit her nostrils. It had been so overpowering that she had almost choked on it. She had given him the message and had left, right before the screams of the man who had been lying in the chair began. She was ashamed to think that she had done nothing, that she had known of the existence of such a facility and she had continued to work for the people who ran it. Looking back she felt physically sick. And now she was suffering for finally accepting the truth and acting on it.   
  
The wheels of his chair drew across the floor with a squeak which made her wince and he stood up. He turned around and walked towards her, the heels of his shoes tapping against the highly polished floor. Fear began to build up within her as her eyes met his. He didn't avoid her stare and Lexa tried to find some semblance of humanity in his gaze. But there was none. His eyes were dead, completely devoid of any kind of emotion, atleast any kind that she could read. Her hand began to shake within the bindings which held her to the table but she quenched it by forming a fist. She wouldn't let him see her pain or her suffering and she wouldn't scream until she could hold it in no more.   
  
Lexa felt his breath against her neck as he bent down to her level and whispered in her ear.   
  
'What are the access codes to Sanctuary?'  
  
She turned her head and looked him straight in the eye. 'I'm suprised the Dominion doesn't know already.'  
  
'Tell me,' he said, a little more venom in his voice the second time round as he raised a syringe to Lexa's eye level. She looked at the glinting point and felt her heart begin to hammer in her chest. Her eyes slowly moved back towards his face.   
  
'Bite me,' she replied, her eyes flashing with a courage she didn't even know she had until she had been forced to embrace it. She turned her head so that she was looking at the ceiling and saw the movement out of the corner of her eye. She had no idea what he was planning on injecting into her but she knew it was not going to be as easy as he had previously hoped. She concentrated hard and felt the twinge of pain begin in the back of her head. She knew the kind of pain that was coming but she was not prepared to let Mutant X down, not after everything that had happened between them and her.   
  
***  
  
Brennan looked up as the lock of the door banged dully through the room. He didn't want to see Lexa. It would just reinforce all of his own fears. She was giving up her well-being for a decision that she had been uncertain of making and one which the team had made on her behalf, giving her no option but to go along with it. But some morbid interest aroused in him. He knew she would need his support and some part of him wanted to know exactly what it was the Dominion did to traitors. He wanted to hate them more than he already did.   
  
He looked up and waited with bated breath for the door to open. It slowly moved back on its hinges and his breath let out in a short gasp as he saw that Lexa was standing there by herself. He stood up and ran over to her. She looked weak and not entirely with it but she was standing and the only guards present were those lying on the ground unconscious.   
  
'What happened?'  
  
Lexa looked up at Brennan's concerned face, her eyes unfocused as she tried to remember. She had felt the pain and she had known what she was doing but now it all seemed so unclear and she couldn't concentrate on a particular segment of the experience.   
  
'We don't have time. We have to leave now,' she said, her breath coming out in short gusts as she tried to fill her lungs. She felt like her chest was compressing in on itself and she was being choked. After a few strong breaths though she felt her body filling with oxygen and she felt stronger.   
  
'Okay, lets go,' Brennan replied as he took her arm and led her as quickly as she was able along the corridor.   
  
There was nobody around, all the hallways they walked down were empty, all the rooms so devoid of human life. Brennan looked around him with a frown. It was all too easy, there was no way it wasn't some kind of setup. Nobody who knew anything about Mutant X would have security this lax. He felt a shiver roll up his spine. The place was either deserted or the people were playing a really good game of hide-and-seek.   
  
Lexa's head was occasionally shot through with sharp stabs of pain and on those occasions she stumbled. Brennan would catch her and help her along, neither one of them daring to stop. They would walk with renewed vigour, both trying to convince themselves that their exit was just around the next corner and that , even though it seemed odd that they hadn't been stopped by any armed guards, it was really just a case of extremely good luck.   
  
Eventually the lucky corner came and as they walked around it they saw a steel door with a small window set into it. Through the window Brennan and Lexa saw a high fence but beyond that was a lush green field and even further away the grey high rise buildings of a city.   
  
Brennan let go of Lexa's arm and she steadied herself against the wall. He pushed the large handle down and shoved the door open. There was a blinding flash and Lexa and Brennan looked into each others eyes, uncertainty obvious in both.  
  
***  
  
'Did you get some sleep last night?' Shalimar asked as she entered the kitchen. The sun was shining through the window leaving its changing shifting glow as it shone through the trees outside Sanctuary. Shalimar took in the dark shadows under Jesse's eyes and the mess that was his hair with raised eyebrows.   
  
'Clearly not,' she answered in response to her own question.   
  
'I did sleep,' Jesse insisted. 'Just not in a bed.'  
  
Shalimar walked across the floor to the fridge. She pulled open the door, the light illuminating her face. She reached for the orange juice and poured two glasses. She placed one of them in front of him on the table.   
  
'You'll be no good for anything if you don't sleep every so often,' she said gently as she walked past him and out of the room.   
  
'And don't even think about helping me on the computers until you've been unconscious for a couple of hours!' she shouted over her shoulder.   
  
He rolled his eyes. 'Fine, but will you atleast delete all the information on the Dominion and send them the codes to Sanctuary,' Jesse yelled back.   
  
'Of course.' 


	6. Chapter 6

I'm sorry its been a while since my last update. I'm not a very academic person so the whole school thing doesn't really phase me but if I don't pass my A-levels my father might actually kneecap me. Anyway, here is the latest chapter. Please try to review, especially if you have any questions because the storyline just got complicated and I wouldn't want any of you to be confused (was that really condescending or is it just me?). And Steph I promise to email you a review about your stand alone story. I have read it and I thought it was unbelievably cute so I'll review it sometime soon. Thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter.   
  
***  
  
'What the hell...'   
  
Lights blinked on and off, their steady rhythm usually so settling to her. But now they were just another reminder to her of where she was. The Helix, the ship that had crashed a few hours before the nightmare had begun. And she had no idea how that was possible.   
  
She heard clothes rustle next to her, their noise breaking the bewildered silence. She looked across at Brennan who sat next to her. He stood up and walked along the length of the Helix before turning back.   
  
'How did we get here?' he asked.  
  
'I don't know,' she replied, uncertainty and suprise evident in her tone. The cockpit of the ship looked exactly the same as it had when they had been flying before, minus the warnings that they were descending to the ground at an unsafe speed.   
  
Lexa looked out of the window in front of her. They were on top of a building, the sky was blue with the occasional cluster of clouds making their calm way across it. The sun was shining from behind them and it lit up the buildings in front, the windows blinding her momentarily, shadows cast by constructions behind. The whole scene would have been beautiful to her if she hadn't been so confused.   
  
'Last time I checked we were in a building, a Dominion facility,' she started, wondering if she was right. She turned to Brennan and saw recognition in his face. The fact that he knew what she was talking about was reassuring and she continued.   
  
'We found a door.'  
  
'There was a fence and some fields beyond it,' Brennan said. He had no idea why he was in the Helix or how he had gotten there but it seemed like a good idea to retrace their steps so they could try and work out some stuff.   
  
'And you opened the door,' Lexa said. 'And then there was this flash of light and...' she trailed off as she realised that she had no idea what had happened after that.   
  
'And then we were sitting in the Helix, on top of the building which contains a safehouse, the same safehouse we visited earlier,' Brennan finished. It wasn't an explanation but saying out loud what they both knew to be true made everything seem clearer.   
  
'So what happened between the Dominion facility and the Helix?' Lexa said. Their eyes met but no answers were there to be found. Lexa leant against the back of her chair and closed her eyes. She felt tranquillity wash over her as she allowed her muscles to relax and stopped her brain from thinking too much for just a second. She breathed deeply, pacing her breaths to try and calm herself further. Brennan's footsteps as he wandered back to his seat broke her from her reverie and she turned to look at him. He was pale and she could tell exactly what he was thinking about. Maybe it was women's intuition or maybe he just wasn't very good at hiding his emotions but she saw that Shalimar was on his mind.   
  
'So...' she started before realising she had no idea what she was going to say to make everything make sense.   
  
'What do we do now?'  
  
***  
  
Shalimar pushed the power button with her index finger and heard the buzz as the computer came to life. It made the occasional vibration and the screen eventually became white. She rolled a chair over the floor towards the terminal and she sat down in it, taking a gulp of her orange juice as she did. She heard Jesse's feet padding across the floor outside the room in the direction of his own. She knew he was beyond tired, he needed a break, they all did. She was still having nightmares about Lucy's death. She couldn't shake them off and she found she could only face sleep when Brennan was with her. If he was holding her in his arms she drifted off and though she still had the strangest of dreams they weren't nearly as scary as the ones she had when he wasn't embracing her. If he wasn't there she gave the feral in her free rein to do whatever she wanted. And that usually involved taking the tour of the area surrounding Sanctuary. She would walk and run and climb for hours, anything to distract herself from what had happened recently in her life.   
  
She sometimes wondered what her life would have been like if she hadn't have joined Adam and formed the beginnings of Mutant X. At times like those she would tell herself that she would have ended up on the streets permanently, without even a cheap motel roof over her head and she would have been hungry and cold and unloved. Or she would have been dead, or trapped in Genomex, in a pod, living without actually living. But there was always a thought in the back of her mind. This thought told her that she would have survived, she would have worked things out, she would have gotten herself a job and a home and she would have had friends. She liked to dream about what her world would have been like if that had have happened and she realised that she would have been happy. She would have lived a double life trying to hide her feral abilities from he people around her but she did that with society anyway. She wouldn't have had a family like the one she had found in Mutant X, but at the present moment her family consisted of a dead father, a missing sister and another dad missing in action. These dreams would bring tears to her eyes and she would allow herself a release. She would let herself go and she would sob for the life that could have been, for the happiness that was waiting around the corner for her, she wept because she knew that no matter how bad her life might get with Mutant X she would never leave, she would be the one who went down with the ship.   
  
It was bizarre how her aspirations in life were so simple. She didn't want anything too big, she didn't want to have it all, she didn't want a great romance or fame and fortune. Maybe it was because her life right now was so beyond complicated that all she wanted was the chance to breathe.   
  
The screen finished loading itself up and Shalimar began searching through documents looking for ones which dealt with the Dominion. There were a number of files which had various pieces of information on them but there was one particular file which held everything the team had collected over the past couple of days. It was pretty full. Jesse had been working hard.   
  
Suddenly it was like a huge jolt hit Shalimar and her vision seemed to snap completely into focus. She frowned and looked around her, wondering what the hell had just happened to her. She looked at the screen in front of her and saw it in a different light. It was like a veil had been lifted from her eyes and now she could see clearly, she had been living with a dim bulb and now the bulb had been changed and was shining at full power. She screwed up her eyes and then opened them again but the view was still the same. Everything was still that bit brighter, noticeably so.   
  
She looked at the monitor in front of her. It had a number of Dominion related files open and she frowned. She had a feeling that she had meant to do something with them but for the life of her she couldn't remember what. She closed the files and started to shut the computer down. She figured that she and Jesse deserved a break, atleast for a couple of hours. Jesse was probably sleeping and Shalimar had some things that she wanted to catch up on but hadn't had the opportunity to. She stepped down from her seat and began to walk out of the room but there was another flash. She slammed into the door frame and felt the dull pain flow through her arm. She groaned and leant back against the wall. Her hand raised and rubbed the injured arm vigorously and she walked back into the room to sit down on the chair. She laughed to herself as she though back on how much of an idiot she must have looked. She could just imagine what Brennan's reaction would have been. They may have become closer over the past couple of weeks but he would still have been unable to control his laughter.   
  
And now everything was back to normal. The lights weren't as blindingly bright as they had been and everything wasn't so focused. She turned the computer back on and waited for it to start up again. She could remember exactly what she had been planning on doing.   
  
***  
  
'I don't see how it couldn't be real,' Lexa said. 'I remember hearing Charles Handon's voice so clearly.'  
  
Brennan looked across at the brunette. She seemed so sure that Handon, whoever he was had been holding them both but how it could be true was the part Brennan couldn't figure out.   
  
'Think about it Lexa. We weren't physically hurt other than major headaches from the crash of the Helix. If that had happened chances are we would have been dead. And you're not physically hurt from all the beatings you took when we were trapped.' His voice was full of cynicism. He had learnt to be sceptical about everything he saw after he had joined Mutant X. Nothing was as it seemed and as X-Files as that sounded it was true to an extent. Even Adam had lied to the team, he had deceived them and Brennan had gotten that nobody was who they seemed. Everyone was playing a part, better than most actors in Hollywood.   
  
'And now we're sitting here when we thought we were walking out of a door,' Lexa finished. She nodded her head slightly as she realised how ludicrous all of her assumptions over the past couple of hours had been. She didn't even know if it had been hours or days or weeks. She raised her arm and looked at the watch with the black leather strap which adorned it. It had only been one night and the morning was still early.   
  
'Handon knows people,' she said, as she turned to face Brennan. 'He subcontracts work to other people and they provide him with facilities and people he can use to do whatever he wants with, or atleast he did when I knew him.'  
  
'So he could have called in the help of an illusionist?' Brennan asked, everything beginning to make sense.   
  
'But why would he terrorise us?' Lexa wondered aloud.   
  
'What do you mean?'  
  
'We didn't give him any information, we didn't tell him anything. If the person in our heads was just an illusionist they wouldn't have been able to extract information unless we said something. So why do it?'  
  
They looked at each other, fear growing behind their eyes as realisation hit them. 


	7. Chapter 7

I know I keep on apologising for the lack of updates but I can't help it. This year with regards to school is so very hard that I'm barely getting a chance to breathe. Over the weekend I am going to make a real effort to finish this story, atleast on my computer and then I'll update sooner. I won't promise cos knowing my luck I'll probably get fifteen essays to do for Monday morning. Thank you to the people who reviewed. The numbers are decreasing gradually so anyone who regards this story, if you could just let me know how you think its going. Good, bad or indifferent would all be fine.   
  
***  
  
Brennan looked ahead of him at the rock that he liked to call home. Both he and Lexa had come to the same conclusion about the intentions of the Dominion and Charles Handon and they had both decided that the only way they could do anything about it was to head home, something they were both pretty keen on doing anyway, if only to see their significant others.   
  
He was worried as hell about Shalimar. He always worried about her safety, even though he knew he didn't have to. She was incredibly capable of looking after herself and he knew it frustrated her that he felt the need to protect her but it was a natural instinct, and not in a hunter gatherer kind of way. He just didn't want anything to happen to the person he loved. It would kill him if she was hurting in any way.   
  
He angled the Helix in through the security entrance, neatly hidden from the outside world. After parking the plane in the garage he and Lexa looked at each other once more. She was terrified that the Dominion would have done something terrible to Jesse and Shalimar. She knew the way they worked and that was what scared her so much. They wouldn't have called in Handon if they hadn't been serious about their objective, whatever that was. He was the Dominions connection to everyone who had anything to do with new mutants. With him working with them their resources had increased six fold.   
  
Lexa and Brennan had both come to the assumption that the Dominion had wanted to keep them away from Sanctuary. With them gone and only two of them left, no matter how powerful those two new mutants were they were still much more vulnerable. It had been the perfect opportunity. But, while Brennan was worried that they would find the place overrun with Dominion agents Lexa was more scared about the possibility of Handon and his illusionist, whoever that was. With the power of creating a whole new world came the power to manipulate people and Lexa was anxious to find out what exactly they had been manipulating Shalimar and Jesse into doing.   
  
Brennan flicked a switch and the door in the belly of the Helix opened smoothly, a whooshing noise filling the cabin. They both stood up and walked quickly to the opening where they looked around them, silently taking in everything. Nothing appeared to be out of place and, although they both understood that danger could still be lurking around the next corner they breathed a sigh of relief at finding nothing changed beyond recognition.   
  
Brennan walked out first, his hands ready and willing to form a tesla coil at the first sign of trouble. He wanted to run to wherever Shalimar was, he didn't want to have to do the sneaking around thing. He had always been one for rushing into a situation and that was not going to change just because he was facing the Dominion now instead of the GSA. The enemy may have changed but his attitude towards Shalimar's safety was the same.   
  
The air conditioning buzzed quietly, filling the air with noise. In their time at Sanctuary both he and Lexa had grown used to it, it was almost comforting to them but now its very presence only served to make them both jumpier. Their eyes flitted from place to place, looking for the smallest sign that something was wrong but they couldn't find anything.   
  
Brennan pushed open the door to the main rooms of Sanctuary. Warm light illuminated his features and he walked through the opening. He looked around him and saw everything he was used to. He smiled. It was good to be home. He heard footsteps and immediately became more aware of the danger that footsteps could signal. Both he and Lexa backed up against the wall. She wished that for once she had Jesse's power to disappear into the very stone that was cool against the back of her neck. Her breathing slowed till the rising and falling of her chest became imperceptible movement and she could no longer hear the sound of air rushing to and from her lungs. But the beating of her heart became louder in her ears and she wondered that it wasn't shaking the foundations of the building.   
  
'What are you guys doing?'  
  
They both visibly jumped as Jesse's voice startled them both. They looked at Shalimar as she walked around the corner.   
  
'I saw you both on the security system,' she said, as curious as Jesse was as to the pairs actions. She stepped forward and looked into Brennan's eyes. Shalimar, more so than anyone bar a psionic could read other peoples body language and Brennan and Lexa were off. They weren't the same people who had left a day earlier. Something had changed but she had no idea what and neither of them seemed prepared to let her in on the secret.   
  
'You guys want some food? Me and Jesse were just about to eat,' she offered, hoping that if she gave Brennan a little space he would eventually tell her whatever it was that was bothering him in his own time.   
  
She turned and led the way through to the kitchen. The sun had moved in its own path in the sky and the light shining through the window was no longer as bright as it had been, it created more of a comfortable glow. Brennan looked around him. He didn't know quite what he had been expecting but the normalcy of the situation wasn't it. Both Jesse and Shalimar were acting like nothing was going on but Brennan had been with Mutant X long enough to know that when everything seemed pretty ordinary it probably wasn't. He wasn't prepared to give in to the thoughts floating around in the back of his mind, the ones which told him that he and Lexa had been worrying about nothing. He wasn't ready to let himself relax into the situation. And despite his desire to just get back to his normal life something still felt funky. He looked across at Lexa who looked as ill at ease as he felt.   
  
***  
  
'How could you let them get out?' His face was red and his eyes were almost to the point of bulging out of their sockets.   
  
She stared at the angry man in front of her with a calm which served only to infuriate him further. She could so easily have made him believe that he was a phone booth but that would have been too easy and she couldn't have held him for ever. She knew better than most that he would come after her and he wouldn't stop until he had caught her. Better than most...but not better than some. She knew that Lexa had found out about Charles' involvement in the torture that had been dished out onto her and Brennan but she wasn't yet sure if Lexa had known about her involvement. Halle didn't have an obvious connection to Handon but she was certain of the fact that Lexa wasn't an idiot. She would work it all out eventually, but hopefully by the time she did Handon would have gotten what he wanted and Halle would be long gone. She knew exactly where she wanted to go as well. She would buy a plane ticket and fly to Florence. She would buy a small apartment, not too far from the centre of the city and she would walk the streets for the first couple of weeks, soaking it all up before she settled down. That was the dream anyway, and she was not going to give up on it at any cost because without that dream she had nothing.   
  
'I didn't intentionally let them go,' she replied calmly. 'Shalimar Fox slipped out of her dimension and she saw the real one. What would you rather I did? Let her go or allow them to go home?'  
  
He sighed. Contracting talent from elsewhere was a tricky business and it was difficult to know who you could trust. He didn't like Halle but she was the best illusionist there was. Her powers were extensive and he had known when he had come up with his plan that she was the one he would need. Controlling the thoughts and the visions of four powerful new mutants was a difficult thing to do and she was dealing with it remarkably well.   
  
'Fine. So what do you plan to do next to resolve this issue?' he said.   
  
'Wait and see,' she said with a smirk. Inside though she hated what she had to do. She didn't want to hurt Mutant X but throughout her life she had been forced to make a lot of difficult choices and if she had to sacrifice them to save herself she would do it. She closed her eyes and felt herself flood into the world she had created for Shalimar and Jesse. Her thought and feelings flooded the dimension they were currently inhabiting and she grabbed hold of their individual consciences, hoping people didn't get hurt too badly.   
  
***  
  
He looked out at the distance from the top of Stormking Mountain. The sun was setting behind the edge of the world and it dazzled him briefly. He turned away from it, waiting for the sun to descend far enough in the sky for him to be able to watch the beauty laid out before him without running the risk of losing his corneas.   
  
'You okay?' she said as she walked up behind him. He looked at the brunette as she moved towards him, her face still bearing the signs of weariness from the past few hours.   
  
'I should probably be asking you that,' he replied, running his hands through his dark hair as he spoke.   
  
'I'm fine,' she said. It was clearly a lie but Brennan knew she probably didn't want him to push it.   
  
'Its weird. They both seem so normal and there's no one else here. If Handon wanted to do anything to Sanctuary surely the best time would have been while atleast two of us were out.'  
  
Lexa looked up at him. She knew exactly what he was talking about. Jesse was the same Jesse she had left behind when she went to visit the safehouses. And Shalimar seemed like the same person. If they had both been taken over mentally then whoever it was was damn good at their job. But Lexa knew enough to know that Handon could find people that skilled, he had the means and the inclination.   
  
'We should probably keep our eyes open for the next couple of hours atleast. We can't be sure yet that nothings wrong with them.'  
  
Brennan looked up at the imposing mountain before him. The yellow rock practically shone from the blast of the dying sun.   
  
'So, you wanna tell me anymore about this Handon guy?' he asked quietly.   
  
She breathed deeply. She had been hoping that he wouldn't ask about that, about her past but there was a part of her that was perfectly happy to tell him. She wanted to get everything off her chest and he deserved to know.   
  
'Charles Handon,' she began after a long pause, 'was in the same class as me at high school, or atleast the Dominion equivalent. He was an elemental and we just seemed to fit, when we were working and when we weren't.'  
  
'What kind of elemental?'  
  
'He created light,' she said with a wry smile.   
  
'Like you?'  
  
'In the beginning, when I was first trying to control my abilities I could only manipulate it. Handon was a lot more confident and he got a handle on it all a lot quicker. When we both graduated he was top of our class and I was one below him.' She walked across to one of the large rocks which lined the ledge on which they were standing and sat down on it, pulling her light jacket around her as the cold crept into the atmosphere.   
  
'We were both offered jobs with the Dominion,' she continued, 'but he was always one step ahead of me. Eventually, unsurprisingly he became my boss.'  
  
'But I thought you were the star pupil of the Dominion, that was why they sent you here.'  
  
'Handon was powerful, very much so, but he was unpredictable. If there was one area in which I excelled and left him behind it was at acting like a cold hearted ice queen. I was better at undercover because I could hide my true feelings. Charles would always lose it if he was under pressure and something had made him mad.'  
  
Brennan turned to look back out over the sea, which was calmly lapping at the rocks below. The sun was gone and it had left behind it the most spectacular clouds Brennan thought he had ever seen. The pinks and oranges and purples merged in the sky and he found himself stifling a gasp.   
  
'So, the guys dangerous,' Brennan stated after a moments silence.   
  
'Yeah.' 


	8. Chapter 8

I'm updating quite quickly...who else is proud? Anyway, I'm finally writing some action. There isn't any in the next chapter (well, a little bit but not enough to count) and then after that there should be quite a bit if everything goes to plan. The schoolwork situation is not getting any easier so I've only just finished writing chapter 9 so the next update might take a little longer. But thank you to all of you who are reviewing and are being so completely patient.   
  
***  
  
As they walked back into Sanctuary they heard the voices of their two teammates in the lab. Brennan smiled as he listened to the friendly brother sister banter of Shalimar and Jesse. When he first joined Mutant X he had been glad to have the company of Emma to make him feel like less of a third wheel but gradually they had all bonded. He felt like a member of the family, granted one who had fallen in love with the woman who was supposed to be a sister type figure. But looking back on it he and Shalimar had never acted like family, they had always flirted. Things had always been different between them and that was the way Brennan liked it.   
  
As they walked around a corner into the lab they saw Jesse and Shalimar sitting in front of one of the computers. Shalimar was operating the mouse while Jesse pointed out things. She would occasionally hit him lightly on the arm when he started to get a little too patronising.   
  
'What you guys doing?' Lexa asked as she walked over to the pair.   
  
'Nothing,' Shalimar replied nonchalantly as she looked at Lexa. The brunette walked past Jesse and Shalimar and the latter turned in her seat to watch the other woman. Brennan frowned. As Shalimar had turned back round in her seat to face the computer monitor he could have sworn he saw a flash of gold light up her eyes momentarily. It could have been the light from the computer reflecting off of them but after everything Lexa had told him and after dealing with the kind of suspicions he had faced over the past couple of hours he wasn't so sure.   
  
Lexa looked over at Brennan as he caught her eye. He looked worried about something but she had no idea what. She raised her eyebrows questioningly as he mouthed something at her. She frowned once more to show that she had no idea what he was talking about when Shalimar's voice broke the quiet of the room.   
  
'If you two are going to talk about a feral behind their back it should probably be very far behind their back.'  
  
Lexa and Brennan both looked over at Shalimar as she stopped speaking. Shalimar had clearly heard whatever it was Brennan had been trying to say and Lexa wished she would let her in on the secret because she was still in the dark.   
  
Shalimar slid off the chair and stood up. She didn't know quite why she was so pissed off at Brennan for talking about her. It was slightly hypocritical to say the least especially given the kind of bitching sessions that they had all been used to after Lexa's appearance at Sanctuary. But for some reason she was beyond annoyed, she was angry.   
  
'Shal, what's up?' Brennan asked as casually as he could.   
  
'Well, I don't know. Maybe its because one of my teammates thinks I'm possessed by some sort of psionic and that's why I'm not acting like myself. Or maybe its because you, Brennan chose to talk to Lexa about this as opposed to talking to me.'  
  
'Shal, its been a weird 24 hours or so. I didn't mean anything by it - '  
  
But Brennan was cut off by the resounding slap as Shalimar raised her hand and whacked it across the side of his face. He felt the stinging as his eyes began to water. He looked at her in shock. Shalimar had never hit him before unless they were sparring and even then she had atleast had the decency to look apologetic. But she was not joking this time round and she was definitely not up for a sparring match.   
  
'Jesse. You finish deleting all the documents on the Dominion and then make sure to send them those codes,' Shalimar said over her shoulder. She was ready for a fight. She could feel the adrenaline bubbling up inside of her and she welcomed it with open arms.   
  
'What codes?' Lexa said, confusion and fear evident in her tone.   
  
Shalimar smirked as she leaped off of the floor. She moved backwards with speed not normally seen in a human being and landed one hand on the back of Jesse's chair. Her left leg swung out behind her and she turned in mid air slamming her foot into Lexa's cheek. The brunette dropped to the floor, out cold from the blow and Shalimar placed both feet on the floor. She looked down at the injured woman and then turned to Jesse. They smiled at each other. Shalimar turned back to the door and was unsuprised to find that Brennan had disappeared. She could still hear his footsteps, their sound carrying loudly in her ears.   
  
Her own footsteps joined in those of his as she walked out of the doorway. Her eyes glowed for a second before she took off down one of the corridors in the cavernous building.   
  
***  
  
Lexa's eyes flickered open and she looked around the room from underneath her dark eyelashes. She had heard Shalimar leave in hot pursuit of Brennan and now Jesse was left to her. She had known something was wrong, she could sense it and this little nightmare had Charles Handon's fingerprints all over it. The codes Shalimar had talked about must have been the access codes to Sanctuary, the one place they all wanted to get into but couldn't even find. Sanctuary had always been a mystery to the Dominion, to Genomex. Neither of the two groups had ever been able to gain access to it or the wealth of knowledge it protected. She had tried hard enough when she worked for the Dominion to know how difficult it could be. And now they had come up with a new plan, one which could actually work. It amazed her that they had never tried it this way before. The simplest plans could always be relied on to be the most effective.   
  
She raised her hand to her face quietly and tucked the sheath of hair which was blocking her view of the room behind her ear. She couldn't hear her own breathing above the air conditioning but Jesse's typing alerted her to his unawareness of what was going on behind him. She stood up as silently as possible, wincing everytime her clothing moved, incredibly aware of the fact that if Jesse wanted to he could smash her head in just by massing his hand and flicking her on her temple. She crept up behind him, careful to keep out of the reflection of the computer screen and when she got close enough she pulled a small syringe out of her pocket, took the lid off and got ready to stick it straight into his arm. The one good thing the Dominion had taught her, the one thing that wasn't necessarily designed for the benefit of evil was to be prepared. Granted it was something she could have gotten from going to a boy scouts meeting but it was worth something to her.   
  
She pulled her arm back and jammed the syringe into Jesse's upper arm. But instead of giving way the skin and muscle were rock solid. She breathed out as a couple of four letter words raced through her mind. Giving the 'sedate him' option up as lost she turned and ran from the room hoping to get as much space between her and Jesse as possible.   
  
***  
  
Brennan slid the door closed behind him as quietly as he could, knowing that it wouldn't be quiet enough. Going up against Shalimar was a difficult task when they were sparring in the dojo but when they were really fighting he had an idea that it would be pretty near impossible. He had fought her before when she had been possessed by Gabriel but this was harder somehow. Atleast then there had been some sort of target. Granted he was a pretty hard one to aim for with any kind of success but atleast he had been there. But this time round there was no one for Brennan to shoot some electricity at. It infuriated him that he couldn't actually fight the bad guy, he was forced to face off against one of the women who could always be counted on to put everyone else first, who abhorred the idea of hurting new mutants under any circumstances, the one who fought so passionately for every new mutant who was in danger.   
  
He walked deeper into the room. He had a feeling that Shalimar already knew where he was hiding and that she was targeting him at that very moment. Atleast Lexa was okay. When Shalimar had kicked her in the head Brennan had been on the point of freaking out, his only ally gone. But as she had lain on the floor he had seen her eyes flicker open for a second as Shalimar turned to Jesse. Lexa could always be counted on to come up with a backup plan, her training had atleast given her that sensibility so he was pretty sure that she would be okay.   
  
But Brennan had given no thought to what he was going to do once Shalimar caught up with him. He supposed he would keep her busy until Lexa had dealt with Jesse well enough to take him out of the game. And then they would handle Shalimar together. He rolled his eyes as he realised he had absolutely no idea how he was going to keep Shalimar busy or how he and Lexa were going to handle her. The whole idea of either of them being able to cage the wild beast was ludicrous.   
  
***  
  
Shalimar landed noiselessly on the floor just outside Brennan's bedroom. She couldn't quite believe that she had managed to fall for someone who was quite so predictable. Hiding in his bedroom was possibly the stupidest thing he had done all night. Next thing she knew she'd find him hiding under the bed or behind some curtains. She slid the door open, not bothering to be quiet. She knew she could avoid any tesla coils Brennan chose to throw her way. In sparring she had always been too quick for him, for anyone. She could always rely on her feral abilities to keep her well informed. She had no idea how she could ever live without them. She remembered a time when she would have given it up for love but now she wouldn't relinquish it for the world.   
  
Her ears pricked up to the sound of running water. She raised her eyebrows. Was he trying to get caught?   
  
She walked towards the bathroom, ignoring everything else in the room, her focus directed entirely at the bathroom only a few steps away from her. She could feel his presence, it pulled her towards the room. Maybe it was because he was Brennan or maybe it was just her hunting instincts really starting to kick in but the magnetism between her and her prey had never been stronger. As she reached the closed door everything else around her became a blur and she purred quietly in her throat at the prospect of the fight.   
  
She pushed the door open violently and it smashed against the wall. She frowned as she saw Brennan in the midst of a flooded bathroom. He was so weak he could barely even stand and he was leaning against the wall for support. He had blocked the sink and the clear liquid was pouring out of it, dripping loudly to the mini lake below. Her frown disappeared as she felt the water reach her feet. She glared at Brennan for a second before she felt the scream of the electricity race through her body. She lifted off the ground and smashed into the wall behind, before landing on the floor. As soon as her feet left the ground Brennan turned off the electric supply. He breathed deeply, trying to make sure he didn't lose consciousness like Shalimar had. He looked at her prone body as it lay on the floor, her hair becoming damp from the oncoming water. He reached for the tap and turned it off before walking forward and picking her up. He laid her on the bed, his body still aching in complaint at such an abuse. His breathing was ragged and he was still having difficulty making his limbs move but as he laid the blonde down on the bed he smiled triumphantly. He knew he shouldn't have, it was hardly Shalimar's fault that she was acting like such a scary, psychotic bitch but he had finally taken her out something he had a feeling he wouldn't be able to do ever again. 


	9. Chapter 9

I'm back...so soon I hear you all cry. Well, yes, so soon. I have been doing a suprising amount of writing lately which does mean I'm probably gonna fail atleast half my exams but who really cares about that when the story is progressing so quickly. Anyway, I have to go and watch an episode of Alias to shove me even more into the world of denial so please review and thank you to those of you who already have. I really appreciate the patience and the kind words. I know its a little confusing but hopefully things are starting to make a lot more sense. And I've just realised that last chapter I was wrong...there's not much more action in this episode, that's the next one which I've just finished writing.   
  
***  
  
Lexa walked quickly into the lab. She had to find some sort of protection for herself. She knew that she would be considered a weapon by many and she could certainly stand up for herself and kick some ass when it was needed but she didn't want to have to beat the crap out of Jesse. She had only just found him and she was not prepared to fry him with her mutation. She would find another way, a way that was less fatal.   
  
She opened a drawer quickly and looked through its contents, quickly rifling through the things she couldn't find any use for, looking for the things that could help. There was nothing and she frantically moved onto the next drawer, not bothering to be quiet. She would much rather have found something loudly than do it silently and get caught halfway through.   
  
After searching through all the drawers in the room she moved onto the cupboards, yanking the doors open and throwing things onto the floor around her in her increasing panic. As she pulled a rack of test tubes out of the cupboard she smirked at what she saw behind them. She placed them down on the table with a clink before reaching for the object behind them. She looked at it as she held it in her hands but span round quickly as she heard approaching footsteps. They couldn't have been Shalimar's, they were too heavy for her but they walked with a purpose and she looked around her for somewhere to hide. Seeing the door on the other side of the room, the one she hadn't entered through she walked towards it and pulled it open. She walked through and came face to face with Jesse. Her eyes opened wide and her breath caught in her throat.   
  
'Hi Lexa,' he said smoothly. 'You left this behind,' he said raising his hand which held the tranquiliser dart. Before she could do anything he jammed the sharp needle into the side of her neck. She felt the shooting pain and was then overcome with drowsiness. She blinked at him a couple of times but her vision became progressively worse. She could feel herself slipping away and she swayed on her feet. His face swam before her.   
  
'You should probably fall over now, otherwise I might have to push you,' Jesse said in the same cruel tone that showed how much he was loving watching her suffer. She stared into his eyes but couldn't find any sign that her Jesse was still in there. She felt something inside of her snap and she willed herself to wake up. She raised the tranquiliser gun she was holding in her right hand and aimed it at Jesse's stomach, holding his gaze with her eyes, hoping against hope that he wasn't paying attention to what her hands were doing. Her finger quivered over the trigger as another wave of exhaustion washed over her. She could almost feel herself giving into it but she swallowed and felt her finger touch the metal. The bang as the gun went off echoed through the room and made her eyes open wider. She hadn't been expecting the loud noise and it woke her up a little. She saw Jesse frown as he looked down at his stomach. The dart poked through his clothes and he pulled it out, dropping it to the floor. He tried to mass his body, hoping to make Lexa pay for what she had done but he felt himself floating backwards. He hit the floor and was out like a light. Lexa leant against the frame of the door. The dart he had stuck in her neck had already released a little of its drug before he had jabbed it into her and she had been saved from getting a full dose. She heard more footsteps and looked up just as Brennan came round the corner, Shalimar in his arms.   
  
***  
  
'You okay?' he asked quietly. She looked pale and worn out and Brennan had a feeling that the drugs in the tranquiliser dart weren't the only contributing factors.   
  
She frowned. Her head was killing her and her vision was still a little fuzzy on the occasions when she chose to open her eyes for more than a couple of seconds. Her neck was getting increasingly sore to the touch as a deep purple bruise began to form where Jesse had rammed the needle under the skin. She turned in the Helix pilot seat to the two people behind. They were in two chairs in the main body of the ship, restrained to their seats. Shalimar had been slipped something to make sure that she stayed asleep. Lexa and Brennan knew that even with an electric shock as powerful as the one she had received and the powerful drugs kept in the lab the chance of her staying asleep for much longer than a couple of hours were small. Her eyes slipped across to Jesse's face. He looked so innocent in his sleep, she couldn't quite believe that he had been the one who had stabbed her in the neck. But the weird thing was that she had absolutely no desire to hurt him. She had hated seeing him with the tranquiliser dart embedded in his stomach. And she knew that when they got out of this mess with the Dominion she would have no desire to close herself off again. No matter what she went through she could never go back. She could never change the things that had happened with these three people she had come to look upon as extremely close friends. She smiled gently to herself and turned to look back at Brennan.   
  
'Yeah.'  
  
'You sure?' he asked, his usual cocky attitude gone, the softer side of Brennan showing through for once.   
  
'I saw him standing in the doorway and I knew he was gonna hurt me,' she began, ready to confess a couple of things. 'But I didn't want to run. I don't think that makes any sense but I wanted to stand there, stuck in the moment. Its been a long time since I've felt anything quite so powerful, but when Jesse was chasing me I felt pure fear. I haven't felt anything that intense in ages and I wanted to relish every moment. Normally I'm so controlled and calm about everything but I was panicking, actually panicking. Do you have any idea how good that feels?'   
  
She looked across at Brennan and saw him smile with amusement at her current exuberance. 'And then when I saw him standing there I wanted to kiss him instead of run,' she finished.   
  
She heard Brennan's laughter and frowned.   
  
'What?' she asked, indignant.   
  
'You're in love,' he said.   
  
She gasped, her eyes wide in horror. 'I am not,' she said adamantly.   
  
'Yes you are,' Brennan teased, knowing full well the kind of pain he was causing.   
  
'I am not,' she repeated, this time slower and more like she was teaching a five year old that 2 plus 2 did in fact equal 4.   
  
He raised his eyebrows and watched as her face changed. She rolled her eyes quickly. 'Maybe, a little bit,' she consented as she turned away quickly and started up the Helix. He turned to look out of the front windscreen and smirked. He and Lexa were finally getting along and it, suprisingly felt good.  
  
  
  
'You sure you're ready to do this?' he asked.   
  
'Lets finish it,' she answered, ready to confront her past.   
  
***  
  
Lexa looked around her. The building they were looking for was pretty well hidden in an industrial part of town and it looked just like every other building in the vicinity. To a stranger there would be nothing different or special about that building but to Lexa it was very recognisable. She had grown up there, had lived there since she was born. Every waking minute of everyday was spent walking the corridors of the concrete blocks and when she wasn't doing that there were some slightly more dangerous lessons taking place in some of the more dilapidated warehouses. This was where she had learnt how to be a powerful new mutant and an excellent agent. Unfortunately the Dominion had been unable to control free will and now she was going to use both things against them.   
  
'There,' she said, looking at the ground below and pointing to a space in between two warehouses. Neither of them were in use at that moment. They had all been contracted out to different companies over the years. But some of the close but not too close ones were inhabited, the whirring of machinery and the beeping of trucks as they backed up evidence of that. Brennan lowered the plane, still in stealth mode to the spot Lexa had been gesturing to. It landed with a slight bump and they both got up almost straight away. The Dominion knew they were there already and it wouldn't be too long before the warning bells had started ringing. Brennan pushed the button to open the door so they could exit the plane and then walked through the hull of the ship, following Lexa. He allowed himself a quick glance at Shalimar. She looked so peaceful, sitting in one of the chairs. He hoped that the plan would work not that there was much of a plan. They would go storming into the Dominion building, they would both stick together till they found the person controlling Shalimar and Jesse and then if there was time Lexa would beat the crap out of Handon. Brennan breathed a deep breath, hoping they weren't being completely retarded. They hadn't underestimated how hard the whole thing would be but they had both been prepared for the fact that there would eventually be a war. If this was it they were ready.   
  
He walked out of the plane and closed the door behind him. Lexa looked nervous and he felt terrified at the prospect of what they were about to do.   
  
'Are you sure we're doing the right thing?' he asked as they stood side by side staring at the building which housed the enemy.  
  
'We're two people about to go into a big building where people really want to kill us and we have absolutely no game plan other than ones where we both die terribly or come out of this as heroes living to fight another day. I'd say we were ready.'  
  
***  
  
She looked up at him. He was imposing enough when he was standing, his six foot two inch frame overpowering hers but now that she was sitting he was even more intimidating. She raised her eyebrows as the flush which had been rising up his neck worked its way onto his face. A shiver ran up her spine as she thought of what he was capable of doing.   
  
'You let Mulwray and Pierce stop the other two,' he said calmly.   
  
'I create the worlds, I control the thoughts of the people in them. I don't control the actions of the people who are not a part of those dimensions,' she said, trying not to sound like she was talking back to him too much. Of course she had let Lexa beat Jesse and of course she had let Brennan take out Shalimar. She was hardly going to give Charles an easy run of things. He was going to have to work a little harder to finish this assignment.   
  
The slap sounded throughout the room as Handon's hand met Halle's cheek. She fell off of the chair she had been sitting on, her knees and hands slamming into the ground. Pain coursed through her face in silent waves and her hands were throbbing. She breathed quietly, not wanting to let him know that he had the upper hand. He did but Charles was like a rabid animal, he wouldn't let something go once he had a hold of it.   
  
'What?' he said loudly. She turned around to see that he wasn't talking to her. He was speaking into his phone and he looked more than a little panicked. She frowned. Charles wasn't one to let his feelings show but she had a feeling that he was no longer in control of his facial muscles.   
  
'I'll be right there,' he said managing to retain some of his self control as he saw her staring at him.   
  
'Get them back,' he said quietly, the danger in his voice evident as he stormed from the room, slamming the door against the wall as he went.   
  
She smiled, the cogs in her mind working overtime.   
  
'Welcome back Lexa.'  
  
***  
  
He opened his eyes, the bright lights flooding into his eyes. He looked around him and then down to the restraints which kept him trapped in the chair he was currently in. He breathed deeply as he felt his body phase into nothingness. He stepped away from the chair and looked towards the blonde woman sitting next to him. He knelt down next to her and shook her gently till he saw some sign of life.   
  
'Shalimar?'  
  
'Yeah?' she replied after a pause in which she tried to wake up a little bit more.   
  
'Why are we in the Helix?' he asked.   
  
'We're in the Helix?' she answered, looking around her for the first time since she had been woken up. The last time she remembered being awake she had been walking into Brennan's room but even that was extremely blurry. It was like the last twenty four hours of her life were missing or something because all she could recall before that was being incredibly wasted. She smiled wryly as she realised that was the part she didn't want to be able to remember.   
  
'Yeah Shal, but why?' Jesse pursued.   
  
'Jess, I didn't even know we were in the Helix. What makes you think that I'll know why we're in here,' Shalimar pointed out as she noticed the restraints holding her arms to the chair. Jesse reached across and phased them so she could stand up. But as soon as she had stood up she was forced to lower herself back into the chair as a wave hit her. A wave of what she wasn't sure but everything that she had done over the past few hours came rushing back to her. As did the anger.   
  
She turned to Jesse who was leaning against the wall of the Helix. His eyes flicked up to meet hers and they both smirked. Looking out of the window they both knew where they were. And what they had to do next. 


	10. Chapter 10

Thank you to everyone who has reviewed the last few chapters. I really do appreciate it and I'm happy to hear that you're all enjoying it so much. I know its a confusing story and I'm glad that you have all pressed on with it regardless. I hope its all starting to make sense...I just didn't want to make it patronising by explaining it really really clearly. I wanted to let everything come out in stages and I hope that its effective. Please review again and I've just finished chapter 11 so hopefully an update is not too far away.   
  
***  
  
He walked along the hallway past all the moronic drones that worked for him day in, day out. He couldn't stand that they had to be near him with their pathetic existence's, it was so disgusting. He pushed one of them, a man only a few inches shorter than him into the wall and out of his way before striding on through the labyrinthine corridors of the building. He and Lexa facing off was not going to happen at the best time. He had plenty of assignments without having to kick her dumb ass. She knew she was about to lose though and yet she was still coming here. That impressed him though he'd never admit it. She had more guts than intelligence but he was slightly awe stricken. And Brennan Mulwray was impressing him. Handon had always supposed Mutant X to be a group of cowards who ran from the enemy and hid everyone else from them too but they were prepared to bring it. He slammed a door open as he walked on never breaking his even paced stride.   
  
***  
  
She looked around her, the nerves beginning to grow threatening to overtake any courage she thought she had. Handon was so much more powerful than she was. Why had she ever assumed that she could be strong enough to take him on? She was so incredibly stupid and right now turning around and running away didn't seem like such a bad idea. She became pale under her even tan and her eyes were moving more erratically. She knew if she stopped walking her legs would buckle from underneath her so she kept on making her way across the concrete. She looked across at Brennan briefly. He didn't look nervous at all. He looked confident to the point of being arrogant. She didn't know whether he was so cocky he thought they could actually win or whether he was just a brilliant Oscar worthy actor, but she was suddenly determined not to be outdone. Part of beating someone in battle was breaking their spirit and there had to be something spirit destroying about seeing two people about to go up against one of the biggest meanest government agencies there was. She smirked slightly as she pulled her shoulders back and lifted her head higher. She would show Charles Handon that she was as good if not better than him if it killed her.   
  
***  
  
Brennan looked at the building as the door swung open. He could feel the adrenaline growing inside him, flowing through his blood stream forcing him to become more alert and aware of his surroundings. His muscles began to tingle, aching for the fight they seemed to know were coming. The breeze whipped at his hair, messy from the earlier fight and he longed to turn around. He wanted to look back at the Helix just so he could make sure that Shalimar was okay. She had suddenly and suprisingly become his top priority in everything. She was the one he thought about when they were in a fight, she was the one he worried about when she wasn't in his eyeline. He had never been like that with a woman before. They had either been extremely casual and he had not cared about them beyond one night or they had been short relationships because he had the concentration span of a small child and couldn't seem to keep himself interested in them beyond a few weeks. But he had known Shalimar for a long time and he still couldn't get her out of his head. Maybe it was the mystery aspect in that she wasn't as easy as the girls he normally went for but there was something else to it. It was much more complex than that.   
  
He watched as a man walked out of the doorway. He was tall with ash blonde hair and fair skin. He was wearing an expensive looking suit, the kind Brennan used to wear with a t-shirt when he was on a job. The guy looked incredibly pissed off and Brennan figured it was Charles Handon, the man Lexa seemed to be scared of. That made Brennan a little more nervous because Lexa wasn't scared of anyone.   
  
'Lexa Pierce,' the man said loudly enough for it to carry on the wind.   
  
'Hi,' Lexa said breezily in a voice that made Brennan turn to look at her. She was way too chirpy to be about to face the Dominion. He considered the possibility that she had taken something in the Helix, and wished that she had given him some.   
  
'And you must be Brennan Mulwray,' Handon said, ignoring Lexa's cheeriness.   
  
'We're here to get our friends back,' Lexa said, her voice deeper and more serious.   
  
'We don't have your friends here.'  
  
'But you have someone who's keeping them from being themselves so that means we're gonna have to get into that building. It shouldn't take too long and we'll be out in a minute.'  
  
Handon's eyebrows rose as he listened to the banter which didn't seem to have strayed over to kicking ass territory yet. He wasn't sure what Lexa's strategy was but he knew he had to be wary of her. She was dangerous because she was always so controlled.   
  
'I can't let you do that.'  
  
'Good thing you don't have a say in the matter then,' Lexa replied. She nodded her head at Brennan signaling for him to walk past Charles and into the building beyond. She didn't want to seem self obsessed but this whole thing was totally about her and she knew that if anyone could keep Handon busy it was her. She had learnt all his little quirks, all his techniques over the years and she knew how to beat him.   
  
Brennan started walking forward and he noticed that Charles didn't even take his eyes off of Lexa. There was serious chemistry between the two of them. But it wasn't that kind of chemistry and Brennan was sorry to be missing the huge fight that was about to take place.   
  
He walked through the doorway and watched as a number of scientists let him. The weird feeling that had been present when he and Lexa had been caught in the illusionists dreamworld, like he was involved in some sort of ambush. He shut the door behind him, wanting to make sure that Lexa atleast had a level playing field from which to start.   
  
***  
  
The breeze drifted across her face as she stared at him. She couldn't believe she was here again. The Dominion was not something you could get away from easily and she had known that it would be hard but her entire past was being drawn back into her present and that was something she hadn't been prepared for. She was finally ready to do the thing she had been most scared of. She was going to finish this, now. No more postponements on the fight. She was tired of waiting until she gained the courage to do something good with her life, to leave the old crap behind. She was going to end this once and for all. The Dominion wouldn't even have the opportunity to regret taking her on.   
  
She frowned as Charles' eyes looked past her. Footsteps sounded across the concrete, two pairs of feet making their way towards her. She knew it would probably be a good idea to turn around but she already knew what was there. Jesse and Shalimar were going to wake up sometime, unfortunately it had been too soon.   
  
'Miss Fox, in the facility behind me your boyfriend is trying to change you into something you're not.'  
  
Lexa breathed deeply as she saw Shalimar walk past her out of the corner of her eye. She could feel the heat of the ferals gaze but stubbornly refused to turn to acknowledge her presence. She continued to stare at Charles, waiting for him to make his move although she already knew what was coming.   
  
***  
  
Shalimar stepped out of the sun and felt the coolness of the air conditioning engulf her bare skin. She stood still, waiting for her sensitive nose to pick up the scent of her prey. It was weird how she wasn't even thinking about him as Brennan anymore. It was like his identity had disappeared leaving behind this guy who was running from her but who, it was inevitable she would catch.   
  
Eventually she caught a hold of his smell and walked forward. She knew he was trying to save her but it seemed that he had never even considered the possibility that she didn't want saving. She liked being who she was, she enjoyed her life and she didn't want to change or give anything up or become someone she wasn't.   
  
She walked forward with a purpose and complete disregard for anyone in her way. She wanted to take him out and nothing was going to stop her, not even him. She had underestimated him the first time but she wasn't stupid and she wouldn't make that mistake again.   
  
People, scientists and security guards instinctively moved out of her way as she strode past them. She smirked as the scent became stronger and she locked onto Brennan's location in the building.   
  
***  
  
She felt his fist hit the back of her head and fell onto her knees in the dirt. She hadn't been quite as prepared as she had hoped. A pounding feeling began in her skull and she stood up, brushing the dust off of her trousers as she did.   
  
She turned to face Jesse and saw in his eyes an emptiness that hadn't been there before. The illusion had overwhelmed him and he was as incapable of fighting it as she was. She felt so completely helpless. She didn't want to hurt him but she couldn't let him take chunks out of her until Brennan found the source.   
  
He raised his fist into the air next to his head, ready to take another swing at her. As his hand sailed towards her face she ducked and swept his legs out from beneath him with one kick. He lifted off the ground for a second before landing on his back in the dirt. Lexa stood up and stepped back from him. She could sense Charles' eyes on her back, blazing a huge hole through her spine. She tried to concentrate on the obstacle in front of her but it was impossible and she turned around once she thought she was far enough away from Jesse.   
  
'Backing out of a fight?' Charles teased with a smile.   
  
She breathed deeply, the nerves beginning to build again as she realised quite how out of her depth she was. Anxiety seeped into her eyes and she began to look around her for a way out of her current predicament.   
  
'That's not like the Lexa I used to know,' Handon continued. He was right, she knew he was. She never used to be plagued by doubts like she was now. In a fight she would never have backed down but she had allowed herself to feel. It wasn't that she had allowed people in, she had completely dropped all her barriers and given herself up to the people around her, their thoughts, their criticisms, their personalities. She always knew that would get her in trouble.   
  
'It looks like Mutant X has made you soft.'  
  
She frowned and looked into his eyes. A smile pulled at the corners of her mouth.   
  
'What?' he asked, a hint of worry lacing the question.   
  
'By that I suppose you're implying that Mutant X is soft, right?' she asked without needing or wanting an answer.   
  
'Pretty much,' Charles replied cautiously.   
  
'That's why Brennan, a member of Mutant X just went into a Dominion building in a desperate attempt to help his friends.'  
  
Charles stared at her. He knew then that he had unwittingly given her the key she needed to fight back. He could have hit himself over and over again.   
  
'And that's why you, a man who claims to be tough as nails coerced another new mutant to do your dirty work for you. Who is it?'  
  
'Who's who?'  
  
'The illusionist, the one you're holding in a tiny room with very little access to food or drink in an attempt to win the favour of the Dominion, the favour that you know will always be with me.'  
  
She looked into his eyes and saw the answer she hadn't been expecting.   
  
'Halle?'  
  
His silence gave her the assent she needed.   
  
'You're using your own sister to take me out?' She couldn't believe even he would stoop so low. She and Halle had been sisters themselves when they were younger, or atleast as close as. They had both grown up under the sheltering umbrella of the Dominion and they had played with Charles, the elder of the trio. They had all been as close as family and she had loved those years. But soon afterwards things had gotten serious. The competition between Charles and Lexa had grown and even though Halle was still close to the latter she drifted away from the former. The real family had fallen apart under the strain of the Dominion. Eventually Halle had broken and she had run as far away as possible. Lexa had been told the propaganda version of the affair and had been ordered to try and find her. But Halle was great at hiding. She couldn't be found unless she wanted to be and she did not want to be discovered. Charles had never forgiven her and he had always felt bitterly towards her because she had betrayed the one thing he had truly ever held dear.   
  
But clearly he had found her. Lexa's eyes began to fill with tears. He was so cold and though she looked for some semblance of humanity in Charles' gaze she could find none. He wasn't sorry for the things he had done and that made it so much harder for her. Her past was so cold and harsh and it looked right at that moment like her future was going to be more of the same.   
  
Tear drops slid slowly down her cheeks and dripped off of her chin before landing on the dry ground in front of her feet. She knew Jesse was moving towards her from behind but she didn't care anymore. She had wanted it to end and at the time she had been talking about fighting the Dominion, but that wasn't the only way to end it. She could give up on strength and faith and hope and love and she could give into the urge which threatened to engulf her spirit. 


	11. Chapter 11

Its been a while, I know. It would appear that my streak of quick updates has gradually slowed itself so be prepared for a few days until the next chapter. I hope you all enjoy this update. There are only two more chapters to go, I think. I haven't written them yet so I'm not entirely sure. And please try to review, anything will be appreciated, good, bad and ugly (LoveConquers: I'm gonna e-mail you about The Prophecy once I've finished some schoolwork...I have a lot to say about it, most along the lines of 'I'm very happy that people are finally acknowledging the thing between Brennan and Shalimar but they have only got two more episodes in which to make Brennan and Shalimar acknowledge that there's a thing between them').

Brennan pushed open the door. He was no longer as tentative as he had been. As soon as he had realised that nobody was planning on stopping him he had given up on the stealth option that he and Lexa had believed would be necessary. He had run through countless corridors, all exactly the same as the last, pushing open various doors, finding different things behind each. Some were labs, some holding cells, some were the organised Dominion equivalent of a broom closet. Eventually he found a door with a lock on it. The holding cells had had those too but this one was locked and it peaked his interest. He stood back before taking a huge kick at the metal. The door flew open suprisingly easy and he saw into a smallish room. It had lights on all four walls but no windows and the light was intimate and warm. There didn't appear to be much furniture from the angle at which he was looking at it. A bed was next to the wall opposite the door, neatly made but bare, the few blankets adorning it clearly not designed to provide much warmth.   
  
He walked further into the room and saw a chair in the middle of the floor, a blonde woman sitting on it, her back to him. She didn't look up as he entered and he was infected by the stillness of the situation. He knew he should have been moving faster, he should have been stopping her from doing whatever it was she was doing. It wasn't like he felt any doubt about her identity. But the calm of the room stopped him, he didn't want to disturb it.   
  
Unfortunately the choice was taken away from him as Shalimar stalked through the doorway. Her eyes glowed in the relative darkness and she pushed the door closed with her hip as she walked further into the room. The corners of her mouth lifted slightly in a cruel smirk. She knew she had Brennan trapped and he knew that she was not going to lose as easily as she had before. There was no plan let alone a back up plan. He had nothing with which to face the beast in front of him. And she knew it.   
  
'You want her to stop me from being who I am?' Shalimar asked, gesturing to the woman in the chair.   
  
'This is not who you are Shalimar,' Brennan answered.   
  
'How do you know that? Maybe I've always been like this. Cruel, sadistic, maybe that's just who I am and we've all been deluding ourselves that that could ever change.'  
  
'No. I know Shalimar Fox and she is strong, aggressive, courageous. She's many things but cruel and sadistic are not two of them.'  
  
'Strong and aggressive can easily become angry and dangerous if the situation requires it.'  
  
'The situation doesn't. Your mind is being screwed with and you can't see it.'  
  
'Wrong. I can see everything so clearly.'  
  
They glared at each other, both as passionate for their own cause as the other. Brennan's eyes blazed as did Shalimar's. He wasn't angry at her. He wanted her to be Shalimar again because, no matter who she thought she was right at that moment she was not the woman he had known and fallen in love with.   
  
She smiled at him. He didn't realise that she knew what she was doing. He thought he could turn her by whispering sweet nothings into her ear but he was wrong. She finally felt liberated. After all the years of hiding who she was from the general public and hiding her personality from the rest of the Mutant X team she felt free at last.   
  
'You're Brennan.' They both turned to look at the owner of the voice. The woman in the chair had turned around to face them. Her gaze was directed straight at Brennan and her stare bore into him. He looked away nervously before replying.   
  
'Yeah. And you are?'  
  
'My names Halle but that's hardly important,' she replied, standing up as she spoke. She walked across the room towards him, neatly avoiding Shalimar and her extended claws. 'What is important is that I can stop this anytime.'  
  
'Why are you telling me this?' Brennan asked, confused as to her intentions.   
  
'Because I don't want to hurt anyone.'  
  
'Well, you've done a bang up job so far,' Brennan said, meeting her gaze with a bitter look of his own.   
  
'Its not my fault. You've met Charles. You honestly believe that I had any choice in the matter,' she bit back. She had been held for so long in confinement that her ability to communicate with people was somewhat stunted and the emotions she felt weren't helped by the fact that she was feeling those of Shalimar and Jesse.   
  
'So why can't you stop it? If you don't want to do this then finish it.'  
  
'I don't want to hurt anyone but I'm only human, I'm not a saint. I need a guarantee that you won't hurt me once I let them go.'  
  
'Done,' he said without hesitation.   
  
'I also need to be sure that Charles won't be able to find me. I won't get you out of trouble just to put myself in even deeper.'  
  
Brennan looked at the scared woman in front of him. She looked terrified despite the facade she was holding up quite well. He would have been scared of Charles if he had been facing the man, and she was his little sister. All the things she was feeling about Handon were intensified by the relationship between the two of them.   
  
'Done,' he said with certainty, wanting to reassure her that he wasn't going to get what he wanted and then screw her over like her brother had.

Lexa coughed and felt some of the dust from the ground which her face had just been slammed into slip from her tongue. She could taste the grains of dirt but could do nothing to remove them from her mouth. She felt Jesse's knee dig further into her back and she grimaced as the pain shot up her spine. She could feel herself getting weaker. Physically she could barely stand but mentally she was unable to think about anything but the fact that she was getting the crap beaten out of her. If it hadn't been so painful she would probably have been incapable of remembering that.   
  
She hated that he was watching her lose. She had never been a very gracious loser and having him watch her was the last straw for her but she didn't have the energy to get up and do anything about it. Besides Jesse weighed a couple of pounds more than her so it would have been somewhat difficult.   
  
She felt Jesse grab the back of her top and pull her up from the floor. He turned her round and her tired eyes looked into his aggressive and confrontational ones. She wished he would just look at her like her Jesse had. She used to be able to tell that he loved her, and she had known that that was what it was. He would have died for her then and now he was going to kill her. She felt the tears building up inside her again, threatening to spill over the edge just like her. She knew she was sliding away from the world and she couldn't do anything to stop it. It was ironic that she had never loved her life quite so much as she had in the past few weeks. Before then she had lived a half existence, one where her job was pretty much everything to her and she had been desperately unhappy. And now she had friends, ones she could count on in anything and she was going to lose it all. Her head began to loll on her neck and her eyes closed. The only thing stopping her from falling to the floor was Jesse's tight grip upon her top. She felt her head drop down to her chest and she felt every muscle within her body relax. She gave herself up, hoping that her death wouldn't linger for too long and that she would be able to get it over with quickly.

'I won't let you.' Her voice rang out in the small room. They both turned to look at the blonde feral. Her eyes flashed momentarily before she stepped forward and lashed out with one hand. Unfortunately for her she was too slow for Brennan. He grabbed her arm at the wrist so she swung out with her other arm and slammed it into the chest of Halle. She flew across the room, landing on the ground a few inches before she reached the wall. She slid slightly on the smooth floor before coming to a stop. Brennan watched her for a few seconds but she didn't move. All his hopes were slowly disappearing before his eyes. Lexa would be facing Jesse and Charles at that point and she was still a little woozy from the tranquiliser. If he didn't wake Halle up from her Shalimar induced sleep he would never get Jesse or Shalimar back and after everything that had happened over the past months he was not prepared to lose any more people from his life. He grabbed Shalimar's other wrist but she flipped herself over his head. She landed behind him, their backs to each other and he was forced to let go of her slim arms as his own twisted. He turned quickly but felt the air of her movement rushing over his head for the second time. She was behind him again and this time she stomped her foot into the back of his knees. He dropped to the floor and breathed deeply, knowing that if Halle didn't get up soon he was a dead man.   
  
'You thought you could change me,' Shalimar said as she walked around him. He looked up from his position on the floor and saw the blonde looking down at him. In that moment he knew exactly how he felt about her. She was so strong and beautiful. It killed him that he had to see her like this but he knew that if he ever got her back he would give her everything she wanted. If she wanted to be left for a couple of hours so she could do the feral hunting thing then he would let her and if she wanted to fight the bad guys alone he would swallow his grievances about the subject and would let her do that as well. And if she wanted to be held in his arms while they talked to each other about the past and the present and the future he knew he would let her and he would love every minute.  
  
He smiled as he pushed himself off of the floor. He rolled his shoulders back feeling the clicks of his joints as they dropped back into a more comfortable position. He would fight her now because he wanted to do all of those things. He wanted to love her so much that it hurt and in order for that to be achievable he had to take her out now. He had to change her.   
  
They stood facing each other both prepared to act completely on instinct atleast for the next few minutes.   
  
He dropped to a crouch as her leg sailed over him. He grabbed her other leg and pulled. She fell to the floor and he grabbed both of her arms. She slammed her head into his and he fell back, the pain stunning him temporarily. He landed on his back but got up quickly as she recovered. Her eyes flashed at him and he smirked right back. She frowned as he held out his hand. The electricity seemed to summon itself, it was like he didn't even have that much control over it. Before it filled his palm however he received a swift kick to his side. He stumbled back and slammed into the wall behind him. She walked towards him, eyes blazing.   
  
'No water here,' she said raising her eyebrows.   
  
'No water but who said I needed it to hurt you,' he spat out as he grabbed the sides of her face with his hands. The electrical impulses shot through his arms and he saw her eyes widen as it reached her temples. She yelled out in pain and he immediately cut the power. He felt her body collapse into his arms, her energy spent, the fight lost for her.   
  
He laid her on the floor and rushed over to Halle. She was waking slowly and he grabbed her under her armpits and pulled her to her feet. He knew he was being rougher than he needed to be but he had to get her to stop the world she had created. He wasn't entirely sure how the illusionist thing worked. She clearly didn't need to be awake for it to carry on functioning without her so he assumed that she had to give a direct order for the world she had created to shut itself off.   
  
'You have to let them go,' he pleaded with her as he searched for eye contact he knew he would have to have if he had any chance of making her trust him.   
  
She looked into his deep brown eyes and she nodded. She breathed in deeply and closed her eyes. She immersed herself in the world that Shalimar and Jesse had been trapped in. She felt it slowly fading away, slowly disappearing into nothing. Everything went black and she opened her eyes to see Brennan looking at her questioningly.   
  
'They're free,' she said quietly, her hand reaching for her forehead where a drop of blood had been making its slow way down towards her right eyebrow. She wiped it away and looked over Brennan's shoulder. Shalimar was standing up slowly, looking extremely disorientated. Brennan looked in the direction of Halle's gaze and after checking that she was okay to stand by herself ran towards the blonde. As soon as he got there she looked up, the old looks and mannerisms back, the cold cruel Shalimar gone, he hoped for a long time. He reached out his hand and brushed it gently against her cheek. As soon as skin touched skin a small blue spark appeared and Shalimar pulled away sharply.   
  
'I'm sorry,' Brennan said immediately.   
  
Shalimar smiled gently, trying to reassure him that she was okay and not really doing a great job. The truth was she didn't mind the spark of electricity. It was refreshing, feeling that kind of contact between them. And it was a manifestation of the real connection between them. She felt her bottom lip begin to quiver under the pressure of a seemingly effortless smile and a couple of hours of being electrified, beaten up and now confused as to what exactly had happened over the past day.   
  
'We have to help Lexa,' he said breathlessly. 


	12. Chapter 12

Once again I find myself apologising for leaving you all hanging so long. But schoolwork and Vines gigs have kept me away from my computer. I'm gonna try and rectify that tonight by attempting to finish the story, in rough atleast. And here, to keep you all from wondering too much about the fates of the Mutant X team I have uploaded chapter 12. I appreciate all the reviews I've received so far and I would be really happy if you would all take the time to review again, mostly just because I'm really kinda proud of this chapter. Its all about the emotions with a little bit of action so I hope you enjoy and then there's the penultimate chapter and then the finale of this story so please bare with me...I only take so long because I want it to be good.

Her eyes shot open as a click sounded in the furthest recesses of her mind. She heard it as if it came at her through a mist or a fog, the noise dulled because of the obstacle. As her eyes focused and became accustomed to the harsh natural light which flooded in she saw the floor. Her head was hanging at an angle and she watched as bits of dirt, tiny rocks and the occasional twig blew across her eyeline in the light breeze. Eventually she got together the strength to raise her head from the mildly uncomfortable position in which it was stationed. She looked around her, her mind taking a while to process the most obvious of things. Beyond Jesse's shoulder Handon was standing, looking around him with a barely hidden expression of terror on his normally so calm face. Beyond him stood Shalimar, looking a little the worse for wear and Brennan standing next to her, looking protective as per usual, his hair a little spikier than he had styled it that morning.   
  
'Halle,' Lexa whispered imperceptibly as she took in the face of the fourth person. She looked tired but happier than she had ever been when she had been working for the Dominion. Running away had done her good. Lexa didn't have the energy or the breath to say anything more or anything louder.   
  
Her eyes moved slowly towards the one face she had been hoping to avoid more than anything else. Charles Handon she could handle but there was too much between her and Jesse for her to view him in the same way. Any guy who beat her up would usually be met with disdain because he hadn't picked on someone his own size. But she couldn't hate Jesse, she found it extremely difficult to even dislike him. And it wasn't just his personality, it was the way he had helped her find hers that really made her love him.   
  
Eventually she got together the courage to look into the blue eyes she was so scared of. They looked back at her with compassion and guilt. She smiled and felt tears well up in the bottom of her eyes as she recognised Jesse, her Jesse. She leaned forward and pressed her lips against his, comforting in his warmth. As she pulled away she felt one of his hands let go of her arm and the finger of his thumb wiped away the slow trickling teardrop which had been making its way down her pale cheek. She leaned her face into the palm of his hand and closed her eyes, feeling her strength under the sudden change of odds flow back into her body.   
  
'I'm sorry,' he said quietly, the rest of the world fading into silence.   
  
'Me too,' she replied, thinking of the bruise on Jesse's back from where he had landed and the small pinpoint scar which would probably remain on his stomach, both of them serving as constant reminders of what had happened.   
  
'Halle.'   
  
They both turned at the sound of the loud, angry voice which broke into their own personal dimension. Charles was red in the face, his normally cool demeanor falling away into the ether. Lexa knew why he was so pissed off. All his life he had tried to keep the people around him down. It was one of the ways in which the Dominion had exerted pressure on Halle. They told Charles to keep her under his thumb and he was only too happy. Halle couldn't refuse her big brother anything and she had caved under his constant nagging and lecturing, and the occasional beating. Lexa had known what had been going on and at every step she had tried to curve his power mad ways but he was, by that time too far gone.   
  
In return for keeping silent and allowing Charles to get away with the long term torture of his little sister Lexa had helped Halle escape. She had felt that it was her duty to do such a thing, having caused her so much pain, even if it was indirectly. She had hoped to free Halle from the clutches of the Dominion. She felt like she had failed but the look on Halle's face at that point in time told her that she wouldn't feel that way for much longer. She looked angry, beyond angry. And she looked strong, she looked like, for once she had the power.Shalimar leant closer into Brennan for support. Ever since she had entered back into her own world she had been hit sporadically by the urgent desire to either sit down, vomit, or sit down and then vomit. She guessed it would take her a while to feel like herself again, to feel like she should be in her own skin and that she wasn't trespassing in someone else's body. She felt Brennan's slow, almost deliberate breathing against her back. It was like he was counting when to breath in and when to exhale in seconds, every breath taking a certain amount of time. It was reassuring and she slowly felt the bile which had been threatening to rise into her throat settle in her stomach. She wondered if he would truly forgive her for everything she had done. It wasn't that she was feeling any more than the obligatory amount of guilt at having attempted to screw over a lot of people and beat her boyfriend up, because she knew it hadn't been her fault. It had been Halle controlling what she saw and how she saw it, and it had been Handon controlling her, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she could have fought it, that she should have fought it.   
  
She grimaced at the memory of what she had done to Lexa as she stared across the gravel at the now blue and purple bruise which had settled on her cheek. The memory was fuzzy and that creeped Shalimar out more than anything else. Not only had she been so caught up that she had hurt Lexa that much but the fact that she now couldn't remember it all exactly. Shalimar relied on her memories to fuel her actions, and normally her brain was pretty accurate. It freaked her out that she could forget something so momentous. She didn't want to question her past but she couldn't help it.   
  
A bright flare of light brought her crashing back into the real world, away from her thoughts. It appeared that while she had been caught in a reverie Handon had become ever so slightly pissed off with all the people around him and he had started taking that frustration out on people's eyes. Shalimar could tell that everyone else was stunned by it but her eyesight was still perfectly fine. Her feral abilities kicked in and it was like she was on auto pilot. She knew she should leave it to Halle and Lexa to finish off what had begun years before but there was no way Handon was getting off without a couple of punches from her.   
  
She walked forward, stealthily, trying to stay out of Handon's direct line of vision. She walked up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder, preferring to drop her stealth act for an all out brawl any day.   
  
He spun round to face her and she smiled broadly before slamming her fist into his nose. She heard the crunch that accompanied the movement and felt her muscles loosen almost instantly as the exertion of the movement woke her body up a little.   
  
Handon buried his face in his hands, a groan issuing from deep in his throat and Shalimar took the chance to kick him while he was almost down. She dug her knee into his chest and he dropped to the floor, his hands flying to the area with new pain revealing his bloodied face.   
  
She felt a certain sense of satisfaction as she saw her torturer lying prone on the ground. She didn't pity the people who used new mutants as target practice and she certainly didn't sympathise with those who used family. She had been through quite enough of that already and didn't want to see others living the same scenario.Brennan smiled with pride as he heard the sound of Shalimar's fist smashing Handon's nose into the next continent. He still couldn't see clearly but the noise rang out in his ears which had adapted slightly with his new found blindness. Gradually the world came back into focus. White became shadows, the shadows became clearer and eventually colour returned. Brennan looked around him. Everyone else, excluding Shalimar looked like they were just waking up, all of them rubbing their eyes and blinking a lot. Handon was lying on the floor, looking like he wanted to be somewhere else fast.   
  
Brennan reached out and took Shalimar's hand in his own, pulling her back from Handon slightly. They both knew the importance of allowing Halle to finish the job. She needed the finality of doing it herself, she needed to get closure but Brennan, more so than anyone knew how Shalimar was capable of losing herself in the moment, getting caught up in the fight.   
  
He felt the warmth of her skin against his own and felt her return the pressure he had placed on her hand with a gentle squeeze. He couldn't believe they still hadn't told Lexa and Jesse about their current situation. It felt a little odd that they knew nothing. If Emma had been around the secret would have been out within a matter of seconds but back then Brennan had hid his feelings for Shalimar. It was ironic that now he didn't have to tell anyone he desperately wanted them to know. He pulled Shalimar towards him and she stepped back, allowing him to lead her but keeping her eyes on Handon as he pushed himself off the ground and dusted his expensive, flashy suit off, the dust and grains of dirt forming a cloud around him.   
  
Brennan saw Handon's look directed straight at Shalimar, and he sensed that she wasn't planning on backing down. Brennan's glance flicked downwards towards Handon's hand. He was flicking light in and out of it, clearly getting ready to release a flash or two straight at Shalimar. Brennan raised the hand which didn't have a tight hold on Shalimar's and opened it. Within seconds it was full of blue electricity, flickering and blazing across Brennan's skin. He saw the fear in Handon's eyes as he realised he was outnumbered and he backed down, stepping back a short way, his gaze now fixed on the sparks.Jesse watched the proceedings, his arm around Lexa's body. She was still shaking slightly from his own confrontation with her and he knew she needed the support at that moment but he couldn't help wishing that Shalimar wasn't the only one seeing some action. He would have loved to mass his fist and slam it straight into Handon's skull but he knew he wasn't quite capable of killing the man. No matter what he had done to himself and the rest of Mutant X Jesse could not force himself to murder someone, even one as nasty as Charles.   
  
Jesse had always figured that that was what made him the weakest person in Mutant X. His inability to close himself off from the more compassionate side of his personality so he could just concentrate on kicking ass had always been a downside to him, or atleast that was what he thought. But gradually, over a long amount of time he had come to realise that they all dealt with their own humanity in the face of such violence in their own way. Shalimar was equally as compassionate as he was, maybe even more so but due to her feral DNA she couldn't hide it nearly as well as he could. The thing about Shalimar was that she had a whole different side to her, one she could hide behind. There was feral Shalimar and human Shalimar and although they had done a pretty good job of merging together there was still an aspect of separation. Brennan did the most normal guy stuff to get over it. He went out to bars and picked up women (not so much recently but Jesse guessed that he would get an explanation about that when Brennan and Shalimar were ready to give it to him), he fought holograms; and he did some not so normal guy stuff like reading poetry. All of them were ways of releasing the tension which managed to build up during a day, tension which built up through Brennan's day job. Jesse smiled as he thought about Lexa's ability to deny that anything was going on. She could feel everything but she blocked herself off from it, hid herself behind thick walls and refused to break them down until she was sure there would be something on the other side which appealed to her. He was gonna have to help her with that one. And Jesse, he slept and ate and played computer games because they were the most normal aspects of his extraordinary life.   
  
So for now Jesse was happy to stand and watch as everyone else finished off the guy that Jesse couldn't feel sympathy for but couldn't hate either.Halle stepped forward, out from behind the shadow of Brennan. She looked at Charles her eyes filled with a mix of emotions, many of which he couldn't decipher as he looked back at her. There was anger and hatred, those were obvious in the clenched fists which she held at her sides. How dare he think that he was more powerful than she was? How dare he live under the impression that he could control her, or that he had the right to? But there was something beyond that, something which distinctly resembled pity and love. She stared straight back at him. His inability to read her had been what tore them apart. She frustrated and puzzled him and that had made him hate her, over time atleast. He had made her suffer by keeping her with the Dominion and then dragging her back when she escaped. She didn't want to kill him but if it came down to the simple choice of her or him then she wasn't going to agonise over the decision. He had put her through enough pain, physical and mental over the years and if she let him live he would do it again. Charles had always been egotistical about his abilities and having himself beaten in a fight by her would lead him to find her again. He would search the underground until he discovered where she was hiding and he would hurt her, he would make her suffer pain which she didn't think possible.   
  
Two words kept on floating around in her head: simple choice. She knew it should have been that way. She knew that it should have been a decision which she didn't even have to think about, not for a second but he was her brother, he was the one link she had in the world and she was about to destroy it. He may not have been a great person, to her or anyone else but she wasn't like him, she still had some sense of what humanity was. 


	13. Chapter 13

So here's the new chapter. Thank you so much for the responses to the last one. I was proud of that one so it was nice for people to tell me that I should be. This chapter was initially going to be 4000 plus words but I did a Quentin Tarantino and managed to break them up into two separate chapters. The other half of this needs to be proof read so it won't be up for a couple of days depending on how much homework I get. Please review this chapter and let me know what you think of the twist(you don't know what I'm talking about at the moment but you will).   
  
Love Conquers: I just read the chapters and I'm gonna write you another nice long e-mail about them. And thanks for the quick summary of The Assault...oh my God! They finally kissed! I'll email you properly once I stop bouncing off the walls...which might be a while!  
  
She felt a large shard of rock digging into the back of her head and instantly raised her hand to feel through the mass of blonde curls. She pulled it away again and looked at the faint spots of blood which covered her skin. She rubbed it off on her trousers, the tangy smell filling her nostrils. She loved being feral but it had its downside. She sat up and looked around her, rolling her shoulders back as she did so, hearing the clicks as bones popped inside their sockets, bringing relief to her joints.   
  
Everyone else was lying on the floor. Halle had landed on her front and was rolling over slowly so she could look around her; Jesse had half landed on top of Lexa and was currently making sure she was okay. Shalimar smiled at his complete disregard for his own welfare in the face of her pain; and Brennan was currently pushing himself off of the ground, making sure that all the bones in his body were intact and looking ever so slightly pissed off at the fact that he had ended up on the floor in the first place.   
  
Shalimar looked into the distance and saw a small cloud of dust accompanying the retreating figure of Charles Handon. He had clearly blown some kind of light charge and had made off with a pretty good head start. Shalimar rolled onto her back, raising her legs into the air as she did so and pushed with her arms. She took off of the ground and landed steadily on her feet, the cut on the back of her head forgotten within a moment. Seeing she was okay Brennan jogged over to Halle and helped her up. No one else was looking, nobody else had seen the direction in which Charles had run. Shalimar's eyes glowed golden and she felt the adrenaline begin to pump as she took off.   
  
Her feet pounded against the ground and she felt her blood begin to pump through her veins. Air rushed from her lungs in short gasps as she tried to regulate her body to its current circumstances. She couldn't afford to lose Handon. It was more than just letting the bad guy get away which would have made her angry anyway. It was the fact that he was so dangerous. Not only did he have some extremely nasty connections but he also had the ability to find Halle again. After all the pain Shalimar had been put through at the hands of her father she couldn't watch as it happened to someone else. She had to stop him so that Halle could finish it. Shalimar had been given the chance to gain closure and God only knew what state she would be in if she hadn't. She remembered the moment when they turned off the life support machine. The steady beeping which had given her hope for so long; the lights from the heart monitor reassuring her that there was still some life worth fighting for. It had felt almost like murder at the time but Shalimar had gained a little perspective since then. Her father wouldn't have thanked her for keeping him alive in such a situation. And it had given her a chance to say goodbye to him, to let him go knowing that she didn't resent him. Shalimar was determined to give Halle the same right. Even if the illusionist decided to kill Handon, and Shalimar wouldn't have blamed her she deserved the opportunity to say goodbye to him properly, to close that chapter of her life.   
  
Jesse heard the footsteps as Shalimar began to run. He turned his head quickly and stood up, taking Lexa with him. He rolled his eyes as he watched Shalimar tearing away from the group. He knew she was too fast for him to be able to follow her let alone catch up. There was no point in even trying. He knew her reasons for chasing Handon were good but he wished that just for once Mutant X could be a little more democratic about how it dealt with bad guys.   
  
'Brennan,' Jesse called across to the brunette male. He looked across at him and saw that Brennan and Halle had already figured it out. They were making their way, as fast as possible across the ground towards the Helix. Jesse put his arm around Lexa's waist and helped her along but it looked like the day had eventually become too much for her and she was slowly slipping from his grasp as she glided into unconsciousness. Jesse swung his arm smoothly under her legs and picked her up from the ground. He ran with her, trying not to jolt her too much and made it to the Helix. He ran up the ramp and felt the door slide closed behind him. He placed Lexa in a seat next to Halle and felt the plane take off as he sat down in the pilot seat next to Brennan.   
  
Ahead of him he could see the small figures of Charles and Shalimar, both of them running as fast as they could. Shalimar had predictably gained some ground on Handon and she didn't seem to be flagging at all. Jesse smiled. She never did get too tired and it used to infuriate him. She could fight for hours, she could hold her own against anyone she went up against and she could win. She could then run for a couple of miles and still not feel the strain on her muscles and the exhaustion that usually hit him after a pretty heavy workout.   
  
The plane gradually moved overhead and Jesse lost sight of Shalimar as the dashboard blocked her from view. Handon was definitely tiring out and he knew that people were gaining on him. Jesse could almost sense the fear that Charles must have been feeling. But he figured that Handon had to have known that it was inevitable. He had worked against Mutant X for long enough to know that they didn't crawl up and die when the going got a little tougher than usual.   
  
Brennan brought the plane down to land on the dusty floor. The landscape through the windscreen was temporarily blocked as dust was blown up around the ship but Brennan didn't notice as the he slammed his hand into the button which operated the door, stood and practically jumped over his chair to reach the opening. He saw Handon running in the direction of the Helix. He was looking away from Brennan, back towards the oncoming force of Shalimar and Brennan stepped from the plane. He watched the expression on Handon's face change from potential fear to the actual kind as he saw Brennan. He stopped in his tracks and Brennan took the opportunity to light up a couple of sparks of electricity. Blue flashed in the corner of his eye but he kept his gaze on Charles.   
  
He heard Shalimar appear behind Handon but didn't dare take his eyes off the man in front of him. He had shocked them all before but Brennan assumed that he wasn't going to try the same trick twice in one day. He wanted to hurt him. It wasn't necessarily all the bad things that he had done to Mutant X, though obviously they played a huge part. The fact that Handon had managed to keep Brennan away from Shalimar, Lexa away from Jesse, Halle away from everyone was a contributing factor to the whole rage thing, but the fact that he had then chosen to run away from it all, to run away from the problems he had created, to hide from the consequences of his own actions was something Brennan couldn't stand. It was the kind of thing which ran true for so many new mutants. Jesse's father had stayed away from home as much as possible, allowing himself to become lost in the job; Lexa, from what Brennan knew, which wasn't a lot hadn't ever really known either of her parents; Shalimar's dad...he had been there and he had cared but in all the wrong ways; and Brennan's mother had managed to submerge herself in a series of abusive relationships before finding a man she could forget about her son for. Brennan occasionally found himself becoming furious when he thought about what his parents had done to him. They were the ones who had made the decision to take him to Genomex, and then his mother had denied that anything had happened at all, to the point where she didn't even acknowledge Brennan's presence. His father might have done the same but Brennan tried to convince himself that he had been a good man, one who would have cared. People like Handon reinforced the opposite view and it brought back memories and emotions that Brennan preferred to keep hidden.   
  
She heard the shot before she saw the results of it. It rang out across the dry flat land, echoing when it reached buildings. The noise served to wake her up a little bit. She stared at Jesse, wide eyed, her thoughts reeling from the sound. They both stood up quickly from their seats and raced towards the door of the Helix. They both took in the scene laid out before them. Shalimar was standing, her head moving from side to side as she tried to find the owner of the gun; Handon was lying on the floor, a pool of dark red liquid gradually spreading out from beneath his head, trailing its way through his hair and across the dry ground taking in stones and dirt as it went; they watched as Brennan moved forward towards Handon but they were too late to stop him as a second shot sounded. Lexa watched as he stopped moving, just stood there and time seemed to slow. His movements were laboured as he raised one of his hands to his chest. It touched the fabric of his top and as he pulled it away the bright red blood stood out against the dull background. Lexa felt Jesse brush past her and he caught Brennan before he hit the ground. She heard her name called out but she couldn't seem to force any of her muscles to move. They wouldn't cooperate with her brain.   
  
'Lexa!'  
  
At the second cry everything became more real. Time sped up to its normal pace and she found that she could suddenly hear everything better. She rushed forward and grabbed Brennan's legs as she helped Jesse carry him towards the Helix. She couldn't take her eyes off of his face. It was pale under his warm tan and his lips were gradually taking on a vaguely purple hue. His eyes were squeezed shut as he tried to deal with the pain of the bullet wound and from her view she could see the scarlet spreading across his top. It engulfed his chest and Lexa looked away, unable to keep her eyes on it without throwing up.   
  
As they placed Brennan in one of the chairs in the Helix Jesse turned back around and jogged towards the door. He hadn't even considered Shalimar in everything that had happened. As she came into view he saw that she hadn't yet moved. She was standing where she had before, but this time she couldn't seem to tear her eyes away from the splashes of blood which adorned the ground where Brennan had stood moments earlier. She was completely motionless and he found himself wondering whether or not she was breathing at all. He rushed forward, hoping that there were no more gunmen watching the team and grabbed Shalimar's hand in his own. Her head shot up as her eyes took in his face. She hadn't even realised that he was there, caught in her own thoughts and emotions but she didn't resist his urgency. She allowed herself to be pulled into the Helix and as soon as the door was closed the plane rose in the air, dust moving with it and it sped off into the gradually darkening sky. 


	14. Chapter 14

I know I said this was going to be updates sooner but I'm really running low on time. Its a shame there are only twenty four hours in a day. And I've currently been hungover for four of them so you're lucky you're getting an update at all. Thanks for the reviews, its great to hear that you're all enjoying the story and I love hearing the constructive criticism, it can only make me better, right? (yes, that's a reference to you deathlioness). Please review again, I look forward to hearing what you think of this chapter cos I like it.

'Here's your new passport,' Jesse said as he handed the small book to Halle.   
  
'Amanda Ryan,' she replied doubtfully. 'You couldn't have given me something a little cooler?' she asked. She smiled on the off chance that Jesse had missed out on her sarcasm. She was beyond grateful for everything Mutant X had done and was continuing to do for her. Not only had they shown up to help her out of the dangerous situation she had found herself in but they were now aiding her by getting her started in her new life, one where she wouldn't be bothered by the Dominion. And this after she had screwed with all their minds, making them believe they were in places they weren't, making them believe that the Dominion were the good guys.   
  
'Are you sure you'll be okay?'  
  
She turned and looked straight at Lexa. The brunettes face betrayed her anxiety over sending Halle off into the big bad world and Halle grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her into a tight embrace. They were as close as any sisters had been and she was one of the few things Halle was loathe to leave behind. Eventually they pulled apart, aware of how time was flying by with no regard for their feelings.   
  
'I'll be fine. More than fine,' Halle said. She hoped that statement was true. Her life hadn't exactly progressed smoothly so far but she figured this was a turning point. She had friends, ones who cared enough about her to put themselves on the line for her. She had never had that before, except for Lexa all those years ago and it made her feel a little warm and fuzzy inside. She felt a small twinge of guilt as she thought of how she had left Charles behind. When he had been shot they had all taken off barely giving a second thought to the dead man. But the small twinge was replaced by an intense feeling of relief. She would always appreciate the fact that she had had a brother but she couldn't force herself to feel sorry that he was dead and gone from her world.   
  
Lexa smiled and turned to the man who was going to be taking Halle into the new mutant underground. He started up the car he was sitting in and Halle took it as her cue to get moving. Either that or she would burst into tears and she knew that if that happened she wouldn't stop.   
  
She slipped into the passenger seat of the vehicle and slammed the door shut behind her, feeling tears begin to well up and the adrenaline start pumping. She was, although she would never admit it looking forward to the new beginning she was being offered.   
  
A though occurred to her and she rolled down the window.   
  
'Are you sure Brennan's going to be okay?' she asked, urgency filling her voice.   
  
'He'll be fine,' Jesse replied with more confidence than he felt. 'He's a fighter.'  
  
'Tell him I said goodbye,' she said. 'And thank you.' She still felt guilty at the thought of what had happened to him and she leant back in her seat feeling the cool breeze wash over her. She felt the car accelerate beneath her, away from the two people and when she next chose to look in the wing mirror they were mere specks on the horizon.Shalimar awoke with a start. She hadn't even realised that she had been asleep her dream had been so vivid. She had been back near the Dominion building, chasing Charles Handon. She could remember the sound of the Helix pulling up in front of him, eventually pulling itself out of stealth mode to reveal the plane in all its glory. She could remember Brennan walking out of the ship as soon as it landed and she could picture him standing there, looking like he was going to blow Handon apart. She had wanted to know exactly what thoughts were running through his mind at that moment and she had made a mental note to herself to ask him later that day. They had stood there as if for hours though Shalimar knew it could have been no longer than a few seconds. And then two shots rang out. She closed her eyes at the memory but that only made it worse as the visions filled her eyelids. She remembered looking around her, trying to find the guy with the gun but she hadn't seen anything or anyone. Whoever it was had probably been camouflaged so well that even the eyes of a feral had been useless to locate them. But the one thing she couldn't picture was when Brennan had been shot. She had been so preoccupied with trying to find the shooter that she hadn't been looking at him. But the worse part about memories was that they filled in the blanks and all she could see in her mind were fractured images of Brennan staggering backwards from the impact, of falling to the ground, of being carried into the Helix and in all he had the same shocked, scared vulnerability to him. She would never forget that face.   
  
After that everything got slightly blurry but she vaguely remembered Jesse leading her onto the plane. She could still feel the pressure of his hand on hers.   
  
Her eyes moved across to Brennan. The movement of his breathing was imperceptible even to her specialised vision. It worried her, seeing him, the strongest person she knew lying in a lab chair, the only thing keeping him alive being a ventilator. Everyone always assumed that she was the strong one, that she didn't ever need to rely on anyone, that she was a completely independent being capable of looking after herself under all circumstances. But the truth was she was scared. She depended on Brennan. Without him, without Jesse and even Lexa she was nothing. She was defined by the people around her because she lived for them. If they all disappeared then she was nobody, she had no reason to carry on breathing.   
  
She stared at him from her viewpoint on the chair which had been a permanent fixture next to his bedside as had she. She hadn't left him for a second since they had arrived back at Sanctuary, and she wasn't intending to any time soon. She had to stay, if she didn't all of the emotions she had been keeping behind sturdy barriers would flood in on her ad she knew she couldn't handle that. While she was at Brennan's side she remained numb, everything was separated from her.   
  
She reached her hand to the back of her head as a sharp pain seemed to jab at her, an effect of the blast of light from Handon. She pushed through her mass of tangled unbrushed hair. She suspected she would need a haircut when this whole ordeal was over because no hairbrush would be able to make its way through it. She pulled her hand away and looked at it. In her tired mind everything took a while to process. The red stood out, vibrant against her pale skin. It was almost like it was mocking her. It was telling her how little time she had left. She closed her eyes and allowed the tears to flow freely down her cheeks, the first real sign that she was still feeling something.   
  
'Please Brennan,' she whispered at the sleeping man as she stood up from her chair in order to get closer to him, reached out her hand and shook his shoulder gently. She knew it wouldn't do any good. He was too out of it but she desperately needed him to wake up. She couldn't let the head wound from a stupid shard of rock beat her before he woke up. She had to see him, she had so much she needed to talk to him about, she had to tell him exactly how she felt. She couldn't let herself slip away from him without saying goodbye.   
  
'Brennan,' she repeated, her tone becoming more urgent as her voice cracked in the silence. She reached her hand out and brushed her fingers against his cheek before she felt herself sway on her feet. Her vision became fuzzy and she blinked trying to stall for time. Her eyes rolled upwards and she grabbed hold of the bed as she fell to the floor, her head rebounding off the cold stone.The pounding was the first thing he felt. He knew he was slipping out of the darkness, coming towards the light as cliched as that might sound but when he finally opened his eyes he realised that the light wasn't quite the one he had imagined it to be. The overheads in the lab at Sanctuary came into view and he turned away to save his corneas. He looked around him slowly, taking everything in as if for the first time. He had never been quite so happy to see Sanctuary, especially not the lab. But the pounding hadn't gone away. It felt like he had drunk too much the night before but, on trying to sit up he felt a sharp jabbing pain like someone was sitting on him sticking a knife into his chest and then drawing it out only to sink it in again. He lay back down and closed his eyes, focusing his mind on the pain so that he could adapt himself to it.   
  
'Drunk too much and then convinced someone that shooting me was a good idea,' he muttered wryly to himself.   
  
He couldn't hear anyone around him. There was no sound except for the whirring of the air conditioning and his own, slightly laboured and heavy breathing. He wondered where everyone was. Maybe they were looking for the guy who shot him but Brennan knew who it was already. The gunman had been sent by the Dominion. Charles had become a useless commodity, one that could have its employment status terminated. He was hardly suprised that the Dominion had shot him too. It was a warning message, one that had gotten across loud and clear to him atleast. But he was a little disappointed to find that there was nobody waiting for him at his bedside. He had assumed that there would atleast be someone around who could check on him and make him feel like he had been missed. He rolled over onto his side, his back aching from lying on it for too long.   
  
A frown appeared on his face as he saw a black boot over the edge of the bed. It looked like one of Shalimar's and although he could believe that she would leave it lying around he didn't think Jesse or Lexa would have left it there.   
  
He pulled himself to the edge of the bed a little more until he was looking over it. As he saw the figure lying on the floor he rolled off. His knees knocked into the ground but his mind was too preoccupied to even acknowledge the pain. He rolled the blonde over onto her back and stared at her face, a million and one emotions running through his mind, all of them accompanied by questions which he didn't know the answers to. He brushed his fingers across her pale cheek. She looked so small and helpless, something he knew she wouldn't thank him for thinking. He reached underneath her and lifted her up, placing her on the bed. As he slid his arm out from beneath her head he saw the blood.   
  
'Jesse,' he yelled into his comlink, panic rising in his mind, overwhelming him. 'Jesse!'  
  
'Brennan?' came the confused reply.   
  
'Yeah, Shalimar's down.'  
  
'What do you mean?'  
  
'Exactly what I said. I need you back here now from wherever it is you and Lexa are.'  
  
'Alright, we'll be about ten minutes.'  
  
'Make it sooner,' Brennan said before cutting the connection. His life was becoming one big ironic statement. First he wanted to tell the whole world about his relationship with Shalimar despite never admitting to any feelings he harboured for her while they were flirting non-stop; and now, right when he got out of a coma she went into one. It was like the world was conspiring against him to make sure that he was never happy. If he believed in fate he would have given up on the relationship by now but he was too stubborn to give into something that tried to control him in anyway.   
  
He brushed her hair away from her face and just stared at her. He couldn't bear seeing her like that. Pain was not meant for some people and Shalimar should have been one of them. If he could have had one wish in his entire life he would have wanted her to never get involved with any of this. But he had an idea that she would never have forgiven him for taking away what she believed to be rightfully hers. She was a feral through and through and Brennan didn't really know if he would have wanted to change that. But he would have tried his hardest to stop her from feeling so much pain, so much suffering.   
  
After what seemed like forever he heard footsteps running along the corridors to towards him. Jesse ran into the room and after a mere seconds hesitation strode forward to come to the aid of his sister. Brennan stepped back, unsure what he could do to help. He didn't even feel the pain stabbing at his gut. It wasn't even like he had blacked it out, he just couldn't face it, not until he was sure Shalimar was okay. He had always known they had a connection. Maybe it had been because they both loved kicking ass or because they both had an understanding about the extraordinary lives they led but they had clicked from the moment they first met. But gradually flirtation had become something more serious. And it wasn't until he had seen her on the floor that he had realised quite what she meant to him. She was his world, his everything, as cheesy as that sounded. He had never looked for commitment in his life from anyone, not just girlfriends. But Shalimar demanded something more from him and he didn't even question it. He trusted her completely. It would have been a weird experience if it weren't her. He was in a constant state of worry about losing her and now his realisations were coming to life.   
  
'Brennan,' came the panicked voice from the doorway. He turned to look at Lexa's worried face. She was staring at the bandages around his waist and he followed her gaze to look at them. The white of the cloth had been stained red. It was gradually spreading further, threatening to block out the previously pristine white.   
  
She rushed forward and pushed him down onto a seat, her force not giving him any chance at resisting. She grabbed a first aid kit from the surface behind him and immediately began about repairing the damage that had been done in her and Jesse's absence.   
  
'You'd think we could leave you and her alone for half an hour,' she said reproachfully, trying to hide, unsuccessfully the fear she was feeling.   
  
He didn't reply. He kept his eyes on Shalimar, trying to stop himself from blinking. He felt the pain from the bullet wound but it was dulled and he managed to ignore it as he watched Shal's chest, rising and falling with each breath which indicated that she was still alive. He couldn't lose her, he just couldn't. 


	15. Chapter 15

This is the last chapter. Its not really an ending because I am planning on writing a third part to this story. I wasn't going to but Mutant X still has to finish off the Dominion once and for all and Lexa and Jesse have to officially find out about Brennan and Shalimar. Its becoming a little more like the real show what with the whole oncoming war but I haven't even seen any of season 3 so totally not my fault.   
  
I have many thank you messages, which I don't normally do but I've had some really good reviews this time round so I think you deserve it.   
  
Firstly, thank you to everyone who reviewed at some point: Sunstar, PeTiTeCaT, Impulse 5, Mayra, Cristina. I love getting compliments and I love hearing that you're enjoying my story simply for the sake of enjoying a good story.   
  
Secondly, thank you to those of you who reviewed more than once: Laily, Alex Flower, Amon-ra1996, CatJerica, Mutant X fan, Fiery Feral, canadian-chic14, deathlioness, prin69. Again, I appreciate that you follow the story and that you take the time to review everytime you read a chapter.   
  
And thirdly, to my three most faithful reviewers. Vivianna: getting reviews from a fellow Bren/Shal shipper is always nice, atleast then I know I'm writing them okay which is always a priority. And I like how you pick out specific bits, it reassures me that you've really been paying attention. Mfkngst: you have reviewed every chapter for me and I really appreciate that. You always encourage me and fans like you are the reason I continue to write. And last but definitely not least, Love Conquers: you have been such a help to me. You have reviewed every chapter and you provide me with such helpful criticism. You always seem to enjoy my updates and you write about them with such passion. Compliments coming from a fantastic writer such as yourself are so encouraging. I also owe you a huge thanks for all the Mutant X updates, all the episode synopsis', all the Brennan/Shalimar emails you've sent me...thank you so much.   
  
Thanks to everyone who read this, if I forgot to mention you I'm hugely sorry. Please review this chapter, its the last one and I would love you all for it.

I hope you all enjoyed this story, I enjoyed writing it.

* * *

'Hey,' she said quietly, reluctant to break the stillness of Sanctuary at night.  
  
'Hey yourself,' he replied. He watched as she walked towards him, the sound of her shoes beating out a steady rhythm across the floor. As she moved closer he caught a whiff of her perfume, a mixture of smells, all of them mingling with each other and the scent of the garden. He had no idea how long he had been sitting there. Minutes had turned into hours and hours were gradually but surely turning into the middle of the night. He found it hard to believe that time moved consistently, that all minutes were the same length of time. When he kissed Lexa, when he even saw her out of the corner of his eye time faded away into the background, but those moments were gone all too quickly. And yet, when he was faced with the mortality of two of the best people he knew time slowed down, to the point where it almost stopped. Working on Shalimar had been too hard. He had known her for years as this tough feral, who could handle anything and although that position had been shaken many times since he had first met her he had still always seen her that way. In so many ways he was angry with her. He understood her intentions, she had wanted to be near Brennan but it didn't excuse all the pain they were all going through now. She shouldn't have hid it from him of all people. If she wanted to act tough she could do it in front of Lexa but not him, he didn't deserve that kind of treatment. They were family, whether or not they shared blood.   
  
She sat down next to him. He was frustrated, she could sense that much. And she had a feeling as to why. Shalimar hiding her head wound to the point where it became almost fatal was bound to be tougher on Jesse than anyone else. But Lexa could empathise with Shalimar. She had just wanted to be able to help Brennan and Lexa had the distinct feeling that if she had been in the same position and it had been Jesse lying in the lab that she would have done exactly the same thing.   
  
'I know you're angry right now,' she said, wrapping her arm around his back, 'and I know that talking is probably not particularly high up on your list of things to do. But if you do want to talk to someone, I'm here. And I'll be here until hell freezes over,' she said confidently. She stood up, glancing at his face as she did so. The corners of his mouth had lifted and the intense lines which had adorned his forehead were fading. She was glad to have helped but it had been a selfish move. She didn't like seeing Jesse unhappy, it had an adverse effect on her own emotions.   
  
'Thank you,' he said as she began to walk away.   
  
'Think nothing of it,' she replied as she coyly looked over her shoulder. She smiled at him before making her way back to her room. There was a hot shower waiting with her name on it. The room was silent except for the constant whir of the air conditioning. Brennan had lived with it for so long though that it had become part of the background noise, he didn't notice it anymore. He knew that if it was one day turned off he would miss it, the world wouldn't feel the same. And in that way it was a slightly unflattering metaphor for Shalimar. She played loud music and she ate Mexican food which stank the whole building out and she never tidied up after herself. But he missed her already. The music and the food and the mess were part of who she was and they had become a part of what Mutant X was. He missed her turning the radio down when he asked her to but only after she had pretended to not be able to hear him at first; he missed that she always offered him food even when he had a plate full of it all to himself; and he especially missed the mess, the fact that he had to clear up after her all the time like she was a child who needed to be taken care of.   
  
He hated himself for not taking care of her. He knew she couldn't stand his overprotective attitude towards her because she could take care of herself as she frequently reminded them all, it was frustrating to her but he couldn't help it. The fact that it was purely selfish had probably never even crossed her mind. She assumed he did it because he didn't trust her but it was really because he couldn't stand seeing her like this, lying in the lab at Sanctuary, her face pale, her pulse weak, her eyes closed, looking for all the world like she was asleep. But Brennan knew the truth, he knew how fragile she was, how delicate. He was probably the only one who did, the only one who ever really got to see Shalimar's vulnerable side.   
  
He blinked, his eyeballs burning from lack of sleep. He raised a hand and rubbed them, trying to alleviate some of the pain he was experiencing. He ran his hand across his forehead and through his disheveled hair, keeping his eyes closed. As his hand dropped to his side he opened them and saw two chocolate brown irises looking into his own, concern etched into them. He gasped and raised his eyebrows, a million thoughts running through his head, the primary one being that it wasn't real, he was imagining things, seeing what he wanted to see and in a minute he would wake up to discover that he had done a Sunset Beach and it had all in fact been a dream.   
  
She looked at his careworn face. It looked like the number of wrinkles across his forehead had increased ten fold whilst she had been asleep. She lifted her arm from the lab chair and raised it to his face, her fingers brushing against day old stubble. The roughness felt good, it made it all seem a little more real, although the pain in the back of her head was doing a pretty good job of that.   
  
As he felt her skin make contact with his he let out a deep sigh. She was really awake and he was really there. He grabbed her hand with his own, not wanting her to stop. As he did she let out a sob, tears filling her eyes until they spilled over the edge. She had been so worried that he wouldn't be awake when she woke up, or that Jesse and Lexa would have been forced to break the news that Brennan was gone to her. Her chin crinkled as she closed her eyes and felt the tears fall from beneath her lashes, dripping down onto the bed beneath her. He reached forward and grabbed her shoulders, pulling her into a tight hug, feeling her tiny frame close against his own, wrapping his arms around her back, engulfing her.   
  
She pulled back from him and looked into his dark brown eyes, the ones that had comforted her so many times, through so much. She placed both her hands on his cheeks and smiled slightly, her eyes shining. She pulled him towards her and pressed her lips against his own, relishing the touch as they kissed. She felt him kiss her back and as he did she wrapped her arms around his neck pulling him yet closer. She lay back down on the bed and pulled him down with her, both of them choosing to ignore their own pain against Jesse and Lexa's advice.   
  
After forever seemed to have passed they pulled apart, gasping for breath, leaning into one another.   
  
'So, how badly do you think Jesse and Lexa are going to kill us?' Shalimar asked.   
  
'What for? Undoing all their good medical work or not telling them about us?' Brennan answered, chuckling as he did.   
  
'Both,' Shalimar replied with a giggle.   
  
He brushed his thumb against her cheek, enjoying the appearance of colour to her previously pallid skin.   
  
'How about we don't tell them?' he said.   
  
'About what?' she replied coyly.   
  
'Both,' he said, causing them both to laugh, releasing a large majority of the tension which had built up over the past couple of days.   
  
'I just don't wanna ruin this,' he continued more seriously. 'I don't wanna let anything external become a factor in this thing we have, even if it is them.'   
  
'I know what you mean,' she said quietly, nuzzling into his neck. 'You think they're gonna tell us about them?' she asked, walking up behind Jesse as he looked through the glass to the lab.   
  
'I don't know,' he replied, wrapping his arm around her shoulder, feeling her damp hair seep through his top.   
  
'You know what we have to do if they don't, right?'  
  
She looked up at him, a smirk and raised eyebrows adorning her face.   
  
'I have no idea what you're talking about Lexa Pierce,' he replied, feigning innocence as they turned around and he took her hand leading her away from the lab. 'But we could definitely have some fun with this,' he said, the mock innocence gone, both of them laughing, lost in their own world. 


End file.
